The seventh installment of Dondero’s solo career (to go with a San Francisco live LP recorded seven years ago and four LPs with his previous South Carolina punk rock band, Sunbrain) finds the old hand Austin, TX folkie as ever mining that bittersweet intersection—can we call it the crossroads?—where ancient Dixie folk, blues, and country pop meet and have a shot of White Lightning at the local saloon. There’s nothing extraordinary or remotely modern in that, perhaps, and Dondero’s namechecking of the great ‘20s “Singing Brakeman” Jimmy Rodgers is his tacit and clever admission of that fact. But never mind such considerations; the man exists because he has tales to tell, more than most, and a good story is always a good excuse for a song (or a drink). He’s a wandering troubadour with an eye for his florid observations using his extensive travels, from the big city to the prairie, from the crowded suburban coasts to the Mountain West, and from the stultifying office to the National Park. And if his words sometimes seem like a diary of a tour that’s for personal, not musical reasons, he is also smart enough to tell the stark tale of what a traveling life is like for an at-best-cult-supported musician. Given his status as a decided NPR favorite for some years, and his hook-up with the well-respected Team Love, it’s hard to take at total face value his latest wonderfully self-deprecating title track here—as if his shows are still attended by mere sound-men and barkeeps and the occasional adoring fan, and no one buys his merch. That is, unless you’ve been in a band and found that these days, as in the more distant indie past, even those with media support (who aren’t blog playthings) often find that all the other forms of media only reach scattered devotees when you leave the A-list and B-list markets and find yourself in less well-connected places that embrace the alternative, non-charting musician. (And if you hit the major towns too often, your draw and excitement wanes there, too.) But Dondero’s willingness to share his own bummer frustrations and his sense of wonder in equal measure (“It’s Peaceful Here” brought back to this one listener my four trips to Montana and bits of Wyoming and northern Idaho, while “Don’t be Eyeballin’ My Po’Boy, Boy” had my mouth watering for memories of the Cajun cuisine sampled on two jaunts to the Big Easy, pre-Katrina, that my taste buds won’t soon forget, even as “Job Boss” returned me, less happily, to disgruntled days working at New York Life Insurance two decades ago!), as well as his coming to terms with the nervous restlessness/rootlessness so common to the perpetually touring musician (instead of fighting it like so many who wish for home from the road, and wish for the road from home), shows he’s got the stuff that’s built to last—for many more of these lyrical albums to come. (team-love.com)
