“What you did back then don’t mean a thing today,” sings Dan Montgomery in the cast-iron curtain-raiser for this affectionately rocking set. Well, that’s a lie. There’s a lot of what-he-did-back-then on the veteran singer-songwriter’s album. And clearly it means a lot to him. That’s pretty much the point. The song’s title says it all: “Start Again.” But it’s much more complicated.
For many artists, the time comes when they need to return to where they started, go back to their touchstones, to recharge, renew, reconnect with some sparks, regain footing from life’s turmoils and, yes, simply have a good time. For Memphis-based Montgomery, a writer and performer of poetic honesty and empathy, that means turning to the early 1970s, when he was in his first youthful bands.
It was a strange time for rock. The garage-y acid fuzz of the ’60s had faded. Punk was still to come. It was a time of glam-rock, art-rock, prog-rock, funk-rock, jazz-rock, Southern-rock, country-rock, the California sound, bubblegum, the simultaneous rise of singer-songwriters and disco. But for just good ol’ rock, it meant Bachman Turner Overdrive, Bad Company, Grand Funk. No muss, no fuss.
Not that he’s trying to relive his adolescence. Rather he has found ways to use the feelings of then to explore who he is, what his life is, now. Nostalgia? Sure. But without sentimentality.
But what a joyous romp it is, with co-producer Robert Maché wielding an array of slashing, stinging, scorching and/or feedbacking guitarisms and bassist Tom Arndt and drummer James Cunningham pushing the pace. Maché, of course, is familiar to New Orleanians from his years with the Continental Drifters and more recently with Dayna Kurtz in Lulu and the Broadsides and as a duo. Here the simmer we’d heard on Montgomery’s last album, Smoke and Mirrors, and the subsequent snappy single “Phenobarbiedoll” (a fave on Little Steven’s Underground Garage satellite radio channel) takes full flame.
The forthright declaration “If I Said It” pairs Stones-y guitar chunk in the verses with BTO plain-talk in the choruses, cowbell clang and all. Party-minded “Sort It All Out” is full of stomps and shouts right out of Slade, T. Rex, Suzie Quatro and Garry Glitter grooves. There are the shaking maracas and pounding bass of “In For A Penny.” There’s the wild wild west charge of “Lonesome Train,” a dusty duet with Candace Maché who provides backup vocals on several other songs as well. Imagine it all pouring out from that Camaro next to you at the stoplight.
But all that glitters… well, you know. In the song titled “Glitter,” one of three somber songs that make up the torch part of things, the sparkle has turned to stain: “Never gonna get all that glitter off you,” Montgomery sings. “Now you gotta go home.” “Baby Your Luck’s Running Bad” sports strummed guitars, a touch of vibes, a helping of remorse and a dash of consolation: “Nobody stays a winner forever, even Dick Clark got old.”
And in the album’s next-to-last slot, the emotional slammer, “All That Matters Now.” “If I should wake up and you’re lying next to me…. that’s all that matters now.”
And this is now. Every beautiful note, every tender word, right in this moment. If he’d closed the album right there, he would have left us sighing, even crying. But that’s not how the story ends. Sure enough, as soon as that song fades the beat quickens and the volume cranks. “Rock Hard,” Dan Montgomery shouts. And we start again.
