While it doesn’t exactly rock out, Metal Shed Blues finds San Francisco band the Old Joe Clarks a bit looser and more uptempo than on their 1997 debut Town Of Ten. Mike Coykendall’s country-blues narratives are backed by actual drums (Coykendall used to keep time by tapping on an old suitcase), as well as guitars, strings, lap steel, pump organ, accordion, piano, bass, harmonica, tiple and clarinet.
The sound is still mostly acoustic, with Mark Orton, Kurt Stevenson, Rob Burger, Pat Campbell and Jill McClelland — Coykendall expertly teasing out just the right accompaniments to Coykendall’s moody lyrics about romantic puzzlements, rural decay and long drives on lonely backroads. The title track perfectly captures such moments: “Daylight breaks and I stop for some food/Put some fuel in my tank while the fuelin’ is good/Pay my respects to the bulletproof glass/It’s a bad cuppa Joe, but I guess it’ll pass.”
Sparse, evocative and pretty like a weathered old barn, Metal Shed Blues carefully reveals slices of time, space and emotion often forgotten or studiously ignored by our supercharged, oversexed, cyberculture. On the song “Slow”, when Coykendall warbles “I’m slow/So tell me if you want me to go, and I’ll go/But I’ll go slow,” it’s as much an anthem or musical mission statement as a lover’s lament.
