review of DADDY

BY REV. KEITH A. GORDON



Back when you kiddies were still watching Saturday morning cartoons in your spidey PJs and eating chocolate-frosted sugar bombs by the boxful, two nice young men from Kentucky, and another from Alabama, were playing in a critically-acclaimed rock 'n' roll band called the bis-quits. Although these three gents had spun a wonderful collection of intelligent garage-pop with blues-rock overtones and a soupcon of country twang, they were soon forgotten, lost in the enormous commercial shadow of a bunch o' guys from Seattle named Kurt, Eddie, Chris and their, well, kinda grungy, flannel-clad friends.



Fast forward 16 years, and you'll find Daddy, which is, really, mathematically two-thirds of the bis-quits playing with some (talented) pals. Over the past decade-and-a-half or so, the three nice young men - Will Kimbrough, Tommy Womack, and Mike "Grimey" Grimes - have pursued various fates in and out of the music biz. Grimes played for a while with alt-country cut-ups Bare Jr. before escaping the industry's clutches only to open his much-lauded record store in Nashville (Grimey's Music on Eighth - tell 'em the Reverend sent ya!).



Kimbrough has toyed around with a critically-acclaimed solo career that has yielded four solid albums (and an EP), but his real bread-and-butter has been touring and recording as a guitar-for-hire for folks like Jimmy Buffett, Rodney Crowell, Todd Snider, and others. Womack, on the other hand, has put his experience with the bis-quits and, previously, the much beloved Kentucky cult band Govt. Cheese, to good use as a whipsmart, slightly neurotic, constantly embattled solo troubadour, also with four acclaimed studio albums (and a live disc) under his belt.



Daddy began as a one-off between friends and former bandmates, their live 2005 album At the Woman's Club documenting two nights' shows in Frankfort, Kentucky. As these things are wont to do, demand for Daddy and the band's growing popularity has resulted in For a Second Time, the official and righteous Daddy studio debut. A ten-song collection of various Kimbrough and Womack originals and a handful of collaborations between the two (and one excellent total band effort), For A Second Time may well be the best collection of pure music-making that you'll hear come out of Nashville this year.



As they say in Nashville, it all begins with a song - something forgotten long ago by the industry's Music Row - and Kimbrough and Womack are two of the best wordsmiths ever snubbed by the biz. Both songwriters have been around the block a time or three and suffered through the indignities and ignorance of men in suits with corporate smiles, and their experience shines through their songs. The semi-biographical "Nobody From Nowhere," for instance, sounds like a John Hiatt outtake circa Slow Turning, but with Kimbrough's slinky fretwork and great harmony singing between Kimbrough and Womack. The song perfectly sums up the isolation of growing up in the rural South, where everything is miles away from anything else, and dreams of the big-time are tempered by simple pleasures.



Much of the rest of For A Second Time follows a similar tack, Kimbrough and Womack swapping lead vocals on songs that are built around the former's tempered optimism and the latter's wry sense of humor and joyful cynicism. "Early To Bed, Early To Rise" is Womack's advice to a younger generation, an only-slightly-tongue-in-cheek warning about the rat race from a man that has lived it firsthand. The New Orleans-tinged "Wash & Fold" possesses all the funky soul of the Meters, Kimbrough mouthing a sly come-on to a young lovely that is equal parts Ray Davies and Aaron Neville.



Of course, the Daddy guys also recognize a good song when they hear it, and their loving cover of '60s-era folkie Mike Millius' "The Ballad of Martin Luther King" provides the sort of intricate wordplay that Womack excels at spitting out. The ode to the African-American hero is especially ironic provided the band's deep-rooted Dixie sound, but these boys have always embraced equality in all things - especially music - and the song's folkie origins are amped up with squalls of harmonica, bluesy guitarwork, and more than a little introspection.



The full band collaboration "I Went To Heaven In A Dream Last Night" is a syncopated, almost stream-of-consciousness tale of Womack's brush with the almighty that evinces a dark sense of humor, manic vocals, and more great throwaway lines and imagery than we can recount here (although "a funny thing happened on my way to the grave, I didn't burn out and I didn't fade away, my heart kept beating until the end of the ride" is a pretty damn funny line). The band - which additionally includes Paul Griffith on drums, Dave Jacques on bass and John Deaderick on keys - backs it up with a funky-cool, twang-jazz soundtrack with lighter-than-feather cymbal brushing, scraps of honky-tonky piano, and Kimbrough's piercing six-string notes. "He Ain't Right" is another semi-autobiographical look back at childhood and what it's like to be smalltown different, the lyrics pounded home above a muscular rhythm, bee-sting fretwork, and potent, gospel-tinged keyboards.



Will Kimbrough and Tommy Womack bring the best out of each other, creatively, and with nearly two decades of friendship and shared musical history to work off of, it should come as no surprise that they're able to come up with gem after gem. The three background guys in Daddy are no slouch, either, but rather talented pros able to cut loose from their day jobs and spin some fun, complex, and satisfying music behind their charismatic frontmen. Altogether, For a Second Time adds up to more than the sum of the individual band member's talents; Daddy the best band that you've never heard (yet).