You sit on an uncomfortable wooden chair, your beer is warm, your glass was dirty when the last guy had it, and more than one tough hombre has his eyes fixed on the back of your neck. If there wasn’t a band taking the stage you would probably run out of here and not look over your shoulder again ‘til the sun comes back up.

The underbelly is alright.

      The time-honored art of nomadic wandering is one not celebrated too heavily in recent time and memory. Luckily, this is more virtue than shortcoming; for once you look deep into the eyes of a true drifter those old hobo feelings rush right back. Run around the country and get on by any means necessary, surely this is a place where true music comes from. “I lied, I cheated, I stole, and then I wrote about it. It’s a bit more glamorous now. Just ask my band.” James Apollo, a hardened character who has seemingly been on the road since the age of sixteen, speaks with a voice universal to all ideals of searching, adventuring, and conformity dodging. “Wherever I am in life, the core values of being a cheap, lowdown tumbleweed are probably going to prevail.”

      There is no need to put a label on his music. When you hear it, you know where it lives and you’re sitting nervously in it’s apartment, “Texas we ain’t see you cry since 1836 / The part of you that’s born to die is still the part I miss,” and this is just the first line of the album. Without asking and only by taking, Apollo’s license to speak on any subject (geographic or far headier) is a testament to his travels. He’s been there and he’s here to tell you all about it.

      It’s massively difficult to picture one shiny object in Apollo’s road case. Polish would be swallowed by grit and covered in the dust kicked up by any tune on Good Grief, Apollo’s second full length for Aquarium Records. If the James gang were assembled on stage in an appropriately seedy saloon, they would most likely be the background to far seedier business in the fore. It’s all very John Sayles in a Lone Star kind of way. Perhaps it is all of this troubadour lore that completes the James Apollo picture. Rather than particularly heroic musicians he points to life on the road as prime inspiration, “I listened to angry youthful punk and whatnot; I also listened to a lot of old jazz and blues. I would say that sleeping under the stars in the desert or getting the van searched at 4am in the Panhandle played a much bigger role in the music I’m making today.”

      His voice howls in a manner subsequent to the rest of the room around him. Among the instruments wailing behind, Apollo’s projection still bounces off the walls and comes back through the microphone. Occasional croons break the heart in a different way than the dry, matter of fact growl covering the rest of the tracks. The guy can sing about love without an ounce of sap and make you believe he’s tough as nails if not immune. Some of the tracks on Good Grief, “Three Birds,” “Dead Men Weigh More,“ “Neko,” and “Good Grief,” seem to have been written while peering through a crack in the wall of a tumbledown shack. Confidently, Apollo speaks about life the way John Muir spoke about nature and has the slightly updated traveler’s attitude of Woody Guthrie, “Move in, rock out, move on.”

      The songs are snapshots. Nothing on the record clocks in at any longer than four and a half minutes, that doesn’t leave much time to mess around. This makes apt sense considering the project’s recording: tracking took just two days. “It was August, it was hot. We were in an old house high above the Mississippi River, and we just went straight through. No shirts, plenty of scotch. The record plays in under an hour, so really, 48 is taking a long time.” The songs that build do so quickly, the songs that hit harder make their point and the songs that want you to just listen make you sit down and shut up.

      Like Joey Burns (Calexico) with dirtier boots, James Apollo tells one engaging story after another while his guitar pokes and cuts across each of the 13 tracks. When he goes electric the sun comes in the window and shines on the wicked. When he’s acoustic the desert rolls by through an open boxcar door. “Good Grief is still very much a wandering record,” he says in comparison to his last full length. “But it’s a journey you’re going to have to make alone. It’s a bit darker, and the rainbow may not be as bright, but there’s something on the other side of it. It’s the journey, and not the end.” Backed by able-bodied men who lend just enough to these tracks, Apollo comes across in an original way that sounds as fresh as it does nostalgic. As a listener you don’t have to fill in any information for yourself, nothing is vague and most of it is poetry.

      Good Grief has a steady mix of slower tunes that elbow in amongst the drum inflected up-tempo numbers. The band is strictly business, no stunts or ‘look at me’ accents. The music serves the vocals first and foremost and that’s what makes everything work on the record. The music as a whole is what’s cool here, not the organ, not the guitar, not the etc. The production allows an entire sound to resonate, which makes for great listening. Scratch the release date off of the packaging and 2005 would be a low guess on a long list.

      On, “Libertyville” a song named after his birthplace, Apollo seems fine with consequences, so long as they are earned: “I want to die, not from living too long but living too high.” His honesty can’t be argued with because he’s never preaching. Doing for himself as long as he has, he seems too wise to speak on anyone’s life but his own. He doesn’t even let his band hear his songs until it’s time to record. “I work with characters and musicians. Basically, if someone needs 3 weeks to ham out their part in the song, it’s just not going to work. I want instincts.”

      “Mercenary Tango,” with it’s saloon style piano plunking and dual tempos offers modern day insight through a diminutive bevy of characters past. Apollo continues his sage wisdoms and brute honesties with a look at the tactics of sailors and mercenaries. “And every sailor he confides when he sees water comin’ in / How quickly we change sides when we see the mess we’re in”. Socially and metaphorically applicable, Apollo’s music does not have to be solely for the here and now. Instances past and future surely find meaning here in addition to the ever clear present.

      The title, far from Charlie Brown exasperation, is more than a hook to Apollo, “I think it’s almost a shame that it’s a catch phrase. I want people to understand it and not blow it off as a joke. The sun rises and sets. When its been up too long, you start to miss those lonely nights. Then they back and its like an old friend. You say, “Welcome back. You belong here.” This is where Good Grief comes from, lyrically speaking. Apollo’s reply? Speaking to this specifically described grief he fathers this advice, “Welcome back. The air you breathe is the love you lack.” No one is playing cowboy here, but there is an attitude not matching footprints with your coffee house singer/songwriter. His travels are a bit more focused these days, he tours heavily in the US and Europe, but don’t think for a second that his days of wandering have ended, “I get nervous whenever I stand still or can’t see the horizon…We’re taking a breather in September. I’m going to Peru to find the next Machu Picchu. Or get shot by bandits.”

Good Grief is available through Aquarium Records (www.aquariumrecords.com) or James Apollo’s website, www.jamesapollo.com. Buy it.

-Joel Armato 08/05/05