A Open-Ended Prayer

Oh friend, I’m gonna ride out of the rut I’m in
A little elevation and an open-ended prayer
Holdin’ out for more than breakin’ even
I’ve come back to the mountains and they’re all still standin’ there

 

I think Lady Marilyn got the Turnpike Troubadours’ new album, A Cat In Rain, about 2.5 seconds after it was released on Friday (Thursday night here in the PNW). That’ll tell you what you need to know about what it means to us; what that band means to us. We’re far from alone on that score. Daughter Ceili and I stood in the depths of a crowd of thousands at the FairWell Festival last month, finally seeing the best country band of the 21st Century in full, live glory. And, as their new song, Brought Me, says:

A thousand person choir
Has an affection all its own

Evan Felker is a shit-kicker poet of the first order. He’s read his McMurtry and his McCarthy, and I reckon the bird hunter knows his Hemingway, too. The title cut is a gorgeous picture of South Texas through the eyes of a desperate man:

For a walking ghost, that southern coast was a lawless piece of heaven
There were bayou dives and oyster knives and liquor for to drown
In the Q beam lights and rooster fights and months I don’t remember

My winning hand went busted, and my luck was winding down
In the southeast Texas setting sun, I sit surveying damage done
We wish you luck and fortune, hon, we’re closing in an hour
Backed up to the Trinity with no more road to run
No longer can I wander all alone on my own power…

Tejanos curse in Spanish and a Cajun eyes the weather
There’s black mud on the belly of the yellow colt I ride
Never thought I’d catch myself so calm out in the open
As a gulf storm deals in bucket loads and hits from every side

Felker went hard into the ditch a few years back, blowing up his band and his marriage with a savage appetite for “liquor for to drown” and a high-profile case of Waymore’s Blues…

I got a good woman what’s the matter with me

What makes me want to love every woman I see…

He did the hard and painful work, got sober, sweated it out on a Texas ranch and healed himself with elk hunts in the mountains, including a pack trip with Corb Lund, which was just a little sketchy and ended up in Corb’s song 90 Seconds of Your Time. He reconciled with his wife Staci and they’ve got a couple of brand new babies. And, of course, the band is back big, headlining major festivals and delivering the old songs with new passion and new songs that stand up with the ones that got ’em here. It’s a helluva comeback story.

As Corb Lund said to me, it’s good to see the good guys win.

Quite a few of the songs map Felker’s journey, but he’s an allusive and poetic writer, so there’s always more than one way of looking at his lyrics. Brought Me surely is a recognition of grace granted by a good-hearted woman — but it’s also clearly a nod of gratitude and a pledge to all of us who kept the faith:

Oh now, it still beats steady
This heart I handed you for free
Should you ever need a thing
It won’t be hard to find me

Standing at the ready
With a dance or two still left in me
Wager that it won’t appear
That I’ve forgot who brought me

As Trigger over at Saving Country Music notes:

When Felker sings, “At an old barroom in Tulsa, I looked up and you were there,” he singing generally about the band’s return at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa on April 8th, 2022. But more specifically he’s singing to you, the Turnpike Troubadours fan, including the grown ass men who were sobbing like babies when they took the Cain’s Ballroom stage, and everyone else who was there in spirit….

Trigger blew the x-ring out in his review of A Cat in The Rain, recognizing that this album is much more than a collection of really good songs:

The story of the Turnpike Troubadours is one of a victory, where the better angels of a bunch of friends from Tahlequah, Oklahoma refused to allow some moments of weakness and the outside noise to tear asunder something that time has revealed to be of incredible valuable to country music, ultimately avoiding what has happened to too many important artists and bands in the past, and even coming out on the other side stronger from the tribulations.

The story of the Turnpike Troubadours is also one of forgiveness. It’s the story of never giving up hope in something you love, no matter how dark things may get, or how far away resolution may seem. There may be no music or melody behind it, but the story of the last six years of the Turnpike Troubadours is a beautiful movement of country music all unto itself, encompassing so many of the classic themes that country music often calls upon.

No matter what music is contained in the Turnpike Troubadours’ new album A Cat in the Rain, holding this album in your hand, or having it streaming out of your speakers is a gift you’re likely not to take for granted, because you know it almost never came to be. In the streaming era of music, few if anything matches that anticipation you felt back in the release days of yore as you ripped off the cellophane of a vinyl, or fussed with that little theft prevention sticker that ran across the seam of a CD case. The Turnpike Troubadours have brought that magic of breathless expectation back to the hearts of Red Dirt fans.

Turnpike Troubadours have always served up a fine cover or two that they end up owning — I think most people think John Hartford’s Long Hot Summer Day is theirs. A Cat In The Rain gives us a songs by Lee Clayton and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Well, hell yes.

We all put up an open-ended prayer or two, and they’ve been answered. There’s a lot gone wrong and bad crazy in this world — but damn, we’ve got us A Cat In The Rain.

And Lady Marilyn tells me:

“You have to learn all my favorites…”