Review – Johnny Dowd: Is Heaven Real? How Would I Know?
You might not know Johnny Dowd. In fact, the self-deprecating Dowd would say the same thing. But your favorite musician probably knows who he is.
Amy LaVere told a story recently on a Memphis radio station about the time that Talking Heads frontman David Byrne gave Texas outlaw country legend Terry Allen a copy of Dowd’s 1998 debut album, Wrong Side of Memphis.
And she relayed the story about how Jim Dickinson, producer of classics by the Replacements and Big Star, mused about the same album, “I’ll never be able to make something like this.”
Dowd has made a slew of records since that underground-favorite debut at nearly age 50. For his latest, his 19th studio album, he went back to his roots and rounded up a slew of crack players in Memphis, where he spent parts of his childhood.
The result is a gem. Is Heaven Real? How Would I Know? is sprinkled with surprises both lyrical and musical, an album that bites with mordant good humor and cuts with boxcutter-sharp wit, all the while swinging with Memphis soul.
Dowd has been around. His wise everyman lyrics are fatalistic but hopeful, realistic about the pain of life but wise enough to revel in its bountiful joys. He's seen some shit but knows that's not all there is to see.
Dowd’s label calls him experimental, but it’s not like he’s playing guitar with a chicken nugget. What he does is create surprises, zigging when we expect a zag.
In “Ice Pick,” he laments a lost love, the memory of which hurts so bad that it’s like an ice pick in his brain. Dowd’s in his 70s – this tragic breakup happened when he was 11 years old. But there are legit pathos too: “So what, we were young / I know that it was real / I’ll never ever feel again / What she made me feel.” (It’s a true story, Dowd told an interviewer.)
Surprise again: The Tom Waits-ian opening track “Another Mule,” with its piano and echoey percussion, is followed by what sounds like a gospel choir in “Is Heaven Real?”
And who expects the bedtime ditty “Pillow” to reference French philosophy and the Greek god of sleep while also including the quatrain “The path it is short / The road is long / I am beginning / To hate this song”?
Silly and profound sit close together in Dowd’s songs, as in “Shook Up”: “The past is always gonna eat the future / That’s why you got to practice the Kama Sutra.”
Female vocalists are often prominent on Dowd’s albums, the sweetness of their voices leavening Dowd’s craggy plainspokenness. Amy LaVere plays that role to great effect on this album, both as a duet partner and backup vocals. She’s the childhood crush in “Ice Pick,” and she’s the voice laying down a gentle truth bomb – “Johnny, she stood you up” – to the sad-sack protagonist of “Hope”: “I had a date / For a quarter to eight / It’s midnight / She must be running late.”
LaVere is also the other half of the adulterous couple sorting through the ashes of their disastrous affair in “Fire and Dust.” It was wrong and it was ruinous, they agree, a mortal sin, in fact. But... “I’d do it all again / I’d do it all again,” they croon together.
That crack band elevates the material. Longtime bandmates Mike Edmondson on guitar and Jif Dowd (Johnny’s sister) on drums are joined by the Memphis crew of guitarist and co-producer Will Sexton (LaVere’s husband and musical partner), Rick Steff on piano, Jim Spake on horns, Alex Greene on organ and trombone, Krista Lynne Wroten on violin and Will McCarley and Shawn Zorn on percussion.
The interplay of Steff’s piano and Wroten’s violin bring a stately reverence to “Is Heaven Real?” Spake’s clarinet brings a playful whimsy to “Pillow.”
“Shook Up” is a stately, scuzzy blues stomp, anchored by the rhythm section of LeVere on bass and Jif Dowd on drums and topped with Edmondson’s fuzzy guitar and Steff’s piano fills.
And everybody sounds like they’re having a ball with album closer “Black and Shiny Crow.” For the first two minutes, it’s a bright and bouncy lark, with Dowd lamenting “Why couldn’t I have been that crow / Instead of being me?”
Then it shifts gears – “Settle in, we’re going to be here a while,” Dowd says – into a bluesy, jazzy, slow burn for six more minutes. “Crow’s in my brain / He’s going caw caw caw / In crow language / That means ha ha ha.”
You can practically hear the wink in his eye and the smiles on the faces of the band.
Is Heaven Real? How Would I Know? was released on vinyl – with awesome cover art by Jon Langford of the Mekons and Waco Brothers – on Oct. 1 by Brightspark Records and on Dowd’s website, and digitally on Bandcamp. It hits the streaming services on Nov. 7.
Find out more about Johnny Dowd at the links below: