The whole concept of ‘dying before I get old’ has become rather ridiculous these days. Many of the firebrands who intended to kick over the establishment have long since become the establishment and are now referred to as ‘godfathers’ of whatever scene or other.
So yes, we do have a tendency to bandy around terms like ‘legend in his own lifetime’ rather too lightly, yet when someone has career stretching over six decades (think about that for a minute) and not only retains his faculties but continues to record music of resonance then I think they’ve earned the epithet, don’t you?
CHARLIE LOUVIN is the very epitome of the term ‘living legend.’ We talk of the people who shaped Country, Cosmic Americana and Alt. Country (Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Townes Van Zandt, Gram Parsons et al), but – along with bro’ Ira – Charlie Louvin was one of the biggest influences on those very trailblazers. Born in Henager, Alabama in 1927, there’s not much Mr. Louvin hasn’t felt, touched or experienced and his bulging back catalogue features songs such as ‘Cash on the Barrelhead’, ‘When I Stop Dreaming’ and ‘Knoxville Girl’ which have shaped the very development of Roots music as we know it.
Thus, respect is more than due before we’ve heard a note of his new album, but it’s soon clear that at the age of 83 that Charlie Louvin remains as potent a force as ever. It’s not true to say ‘The Battles Rage On’ is a comeback album because he never went off the radar, but it is true to say that this time he’s back and it’s very personal indeed, because ‘The Battles Rage On’ is an album about war and the way it affects real people through generation after generation.
Louvin has every right to record songs like these. A veteran of the Korean War, he’s seen the horror of mass destruction first-hand and the holes it rips in the lives of those it leaves behind. He’s very plainly a patriot, but ‘The Battles Rage On’ comes from a God-fearing humanitarian point of view. Whatever else it is, it’s anything but a blind, Gung-Ho record from a guy who’s too old to know better.
Musically, it’s easy enough on the ear. Recorded (inevitably) in Nashville, the twelve songs have a potent, live feel, with lots of bright acoustic guitars, spirited Hillbilly fiddle, jaywalking basslines and pattering railroad drumming. It’s the kind of thing I’d probably describe as ‘Burrito-esque’ if I didn’t stop to remember that Charlie and Ira had actually pioneered that Country-Roots style over a decade earlier. Louvin’s voice, meanwhile, is as craggy and lived-in as you’d probably imagine, but it’s no less potent or fiery for that and his elder statesman persona only adds gravitas to these serious, heartfelt songs.
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Many of the tracks are written either from the point of view of a soldier waiting to go into combat or the relatives at home desperate for news from the front. Songs like ‘More Than a Name on the Wall’ (“lord, my boy was special, he meant the world to me/ how I’d love to see him one more time you see”) and ‘Just Before the Battle, Mother’ (“you’ll not forget me if I’m numbered with the slain”) are tear-jerking, fiddle-fuelled eulogies for those left to grieve, while ‘There’s a Star-Spangled Banner’ and the Merle Haggard-penned ‘I Wonder if They Ever Think of Me’ paint vivid snapshots of the Vietnam campaign’s forgotten sons.
I must confess I’m a little more uneasy about the Bible-belt sentiments expressed in ‘Mother I thank you for the Bible’ and ‘Weapon of Prayer’, although there’s no doubting the sincerity of Charlie’s delivery. However, even the stone-hearted can’t fail to be moved by ‘Robe of White’ where a wife reads a letter telling of how her husband was killed in action while ‘Searching for a Soldier’s Grave’ reminds us millions ended up in unmarked tombs rather than a send-off with full military honours in Arlington cemetery.
Critics will probably flag ‘The Battles Rage On’ as Charlie Louvin’s ‘American Recordings’ and in some cases these songs have the ability to devastate in the way Johnny Cash’s version of ‘Hurt’ did. Whether a world in the icy grip of a recession and sub-zero winter temperatures will welcome it is a moot point, but its’ very reason for existing and needing to be out there is beyond question.
Charlie Louvin online
True North Records online
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