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Rodney DeCroo's Lightning in a Bottle

'Mockingbird Bible' puts him a new league.

Adrian Mack 25 Sep 2008TheTyee.ca

Adrian Mack writes regularly about music for The Tyee.

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Getting young and old acclaim.

I always liked local troubadour and all-round shaggy guy Rodney DeCroo, but I also thought he was a lightweight. His songwriting sits in the manful, quasi-roots territory inhabited by Kris Kristofferson, Steve Earle, and John Prine. A guy can disappear inside those long shadows.

But my opinion of Rodney's music took a decisive 180 when he released his 2005 album, War Torn Man. A live record that emerged, by accident, from Rodney's perverse decision to put his band through an entirely new set as it wound down a western Canadian tour, War Torn Man is as powerful an argument for lightning in a bottle as you're likely to get from a 45-minute CD.

More importantly, since I dug the music, I listened a little more closely to Rodney's words. Which in turn awakened me to the gruesome mojo at the heart of the music. The man has lived, to say the very least, and as the title of this profile I contributed to the Georgia Straight last year puts it, Rodney DeCroo sings to stay sane.

A good dose of Rodney's balance of reticence and emotion -- which is the engine driving his best work, and which gives rise to his bruised, but indirect lyricism -- can be found on this track, "Long White Road," from his new album Mockingbird Bible. I like it in particular, because the typically oblique, Rodney-esque suggestion of some terrible storm on the horizon is brought to life in those simple organ bleats and slack tom sounds.

In the buildup to the release of Mockingbird Bible last month, I found myself perched behind Rodney, on stage, trying to keep up with one of the most modestly brilliant bands in the city. They needed somebody to sit in while regular drummer Ed Goodine took a little time off. I leapt at the chance even though I could never match Goodine's classy stick-work. As guitarist Jon Wood has it, he's a "grown-up" drummer. I'm a basher, on the other hand, and I warned Rodney. "I can't do what Ed does," I said. "I'm a moron."

"That's fine," Rodney shrugged. "We knew that when we asked you."

The shows went well enough, but I was happier to join the audience for Rodney's CD release party a couple weeks back at Vancouver's Railway Club. I'm better off writing about the guy than playing with him. We both are.

The room was as stifling as I've ever felt it, with folks standing on chairs and on the benches that line the north wall. Tears were shed that night. Rodney tends to have that effect on people, especially women. And to Rodney's delight (because he thinks nobody is interested in him, the idiot), it was a young crowd. It would seem that after eight years or so of entertaining no-hopers on the wrong side of 40 -- like me -- Rodney is becoming fashionable. Or more precisely, those kids are developing damn good taste. In either case, it's about time.

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