Elderly Thespian: Music Review: Sherman Ewing, Single Room Saloon

This clause was 1st published at BlogcriticsIf you are unfamiliar with the name Sherman Ewing, the digital release of his 2nd album, Single Room Saloon on January 11 may well remedy that.This ten song rock, pop, county collection runs the gamut from haunting bluesy social commentary to introspective soul searching, from upbeat swinging melodies to anarchic cacophonies.His lyrics are personal and symbolical of a generation.

wing is a singer-song writer with something to say and he says it with a raw honesty that will prompt you of early Dylan.The world he describes is not especially pretty.It is a point where people fall, sometimes to raise again, sometimes not.More frequently than not his music is as coarse as that world, and when it isn't, when it seems melodic and tuneful, the lilting melodies are in ironic counterpoint to the disturbing lyrics.This may be pop music, but it is pop music as art."The Commission" has a lilting melody, but it is a song about the demand for alteration in a club where people are on the streets dying from the heat, where people are active for the good of the road.The charge and what it stands for not only don't help; they bear in the way. "Angel," the chorus demands, "Burn this mission down.""Flatlands" has a sweet folk song vibe with a pulsating rhythm, but it describes 40,000 children wasted in the sand, with the vultures ready to pounce.The fragrance of the music morphs into the sorrow of a dirge."Heaven Waits" is a melodic old style folk rocker that looks at the mind of heavenly rewards with a somewhat jaundiced eye.Its opening guitar measures belie its message. Ewing has a way of using the medicine to quiet the hearer into a mistaken sensation of serenity, only to commit the rug away from anyone paying close attention to the lyric. "Single Room Saloon," the title song, on the other hand uses a dissonant musical setting to repeat the noise of the singer's relationship to a world that is comparable a one room saloon.He's still here, but he's "slightly out of tune," more than sfallly in the light of about of the sonic distortion.It too features some rocking guitar lick and a blasting trumpet solo."Happiness" and "Right Behind the Scars" both appear to face at the chances for redemption after a misspent past."I can see the river calling," he says in "Right Behind the Scars," "will you let it make you out to sea?"In both, the music echoes the sense."Walk On" is a classic anthem with a passionate guitar riff."If you're lost in the night, you will find that there's love on the former side; walk on," directs the chorus.It ends with a creed like coda featuring a guitar solo interspersed with chants of "walking on." According to the bio on his website, Ewing is no new kid on the block.A 40 year old native of Minnesota, he went to boarding school in England.It was the sentence of the Punk revolution and as Ewing toldTipitina's John D'Aquila in an online interview, "Everyone was into the Sex Pistols."He came second to the States to go Columbia University, where he met "Jojo" Hermann of Widespread Panic.They began to work together in a band called Sherman and the Bureaucrats, and he continued playing around New York through the nineties.In 2002, he teamed with producer Godfrey Diamond on his 1st solo album, Blue Moon.Among the influences on his medicine he mentions in the D'Aquila interview are Neil Young, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Harry Chapin and Bruce Springsteen. Bob Dylan, he says, "started me getting into the guitar."While his music is really an eclectic mix, these singer-songwriters are clearly there in spirit.Ewing collaborates again with Diamond and Hermann on this new album.Others included on the CD are Ivan Neville, drummer, George Recile and bassist, Tony Garnier.Tom Marshall is on keyboards.Zak Soulam and Jimbo Walsh help out on guitar and Michael Ray handles the trumpet work.Ewing's core band is made up of guitarist Anthony Krizan, Rob Clores on keyboards and a rhythm part of John and Kevin Hummel.