The ‘Americana’ tag gets attached to any old hobbledehoy with a checked shirt and a battered guitar these days, but it wasn’t always like that, especially this side of the pond.
Though largely undetected on the commercial radar at the time, a small but dedicated roots-rock movement emerged in the North of England in the late 1980s, long before the term ‘Americana’ was coined. Liverpool’s woefully under-rated The Onset arguably got it down first on vinyl with their ‘The Pool Of Life’ LP (on Geoff Davies’ Probe Plus imprint) in 1988, but they were soon followed by a fantastically unsung Lancashire-based trio: Gary Hall & The Stormkeepers, Mirrors Over Kiev and Red Moon Joe.
All three of the above made great roots-inclined LPs around the cusp of the 1990s for Fred Underhill’s Devon-based Run River label (also home to the likes of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn for a while), but while it was highly-respected, it didn’t – unlike Jeff Barratt’s Heavenly imprint which signed The Rockingbirds – have the sort of hip cachet that allowed performers to gain easy access to the London-based media tastemakers: something which sadly made a difference back then.
Red Moon Joe’s excellent 1991 LP ‘Arms Of Sorrow’ found them shaping up as a Northern English Uncle Tupelo; mixing and matching punk rock energy, bar-room brawling rock’n’roll, folk and country melancholy and creating something highly accomplished and individualistic in the process.
Perhaps inevitably, the LP became something of a lost classic, but if there’s one good thing to come out of the whole ‘Americana’ boom, it’s that the playing field has been levelled somewhat for the likes of RMJ, whose surprise – but most welcome – return comes out of the blue with ‘Midnight Trains’: their first new LP in 22 years.
They split in 1993, but they haven’t been idle in the meantime, of course. Frontman/ main songwriter Mark Wilkinson, especially, has since built up a reputation as ‘picker of choice’ and has shared stages with hallowed names such as Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle and Jay Farrar, yet with ‘Midnight Trains’, it really feels like Red Moon Joe have never been away.
Self-produced and recorded with Gary Hall at The Voodoo Rooms, ‘Midnight Trains’ finds the old Chorley gang – Wilkinson, multi-instrumentalist ‘Brave’ Dave Fitzpatrick, bassist David A. Smith and drummer Paul Casey – all back in harness, though they now have a secret weapon: pedal steel/ dobro meister Steve Conway, who (often in cahoots with Smith) also knows how to pen a mean tune or three.
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‘Midnight Trains’ showcases a band painting from a broad palette of country/roots stylings without ever sacrificing their own individuality or a belief in the strength of their songs. At times the results rock (the bittersweet drive of ‘The Blues’, the Tupelo-esque cut’ n’ thrust of ‘Save Me’); more often they’re steeped in melancholy (the Byrds-y chime of ‘Girl I Used To Know’, the gorgeous ache of ‘Our Song’, updated from ‘Arms Of Sorrow’) but it’s always credible and it’s not averse to a healthy dose of self-deprecatory humour either. Make straight for ‘Guy Clark’ - Wilkinson’s wonderfully witty tribute to Texan troubadours, French rolling tobacco and “knocking Chet Atkins on his 70-year old ass” - if you can’t take that last claim at face value.
Elsewhere, they’re more than ready for the country on the feisty, bluegrass-y hoedown ‘Drop The Anchor’ or capable of penning the elegant likes of ‘Listen To Her Songs’, which recalls Townes Van Zandt at his most romantic. Loss and a striving for redemption are the emotions most frequently shadowing the songs and they reach their restless height on the smouldering title track where Wilkinson sings “lights on the horizon, a thousand falling stars/ They don’t light the darkness, the darkness in my heart” as the band ebb and swell around him.
It’s a tough old world out there and it’s a brave band that jumps back into the fray right now, yet Red Moon have done so with both feet and landed with a comeback LP that’s as fantastic as it is unexpected. Let’s hope they’ve a whole load more boxcars to jump before they ride off into a glorious sunset this time around.
Red Moon Joe online
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