Jerry Joseph Teams with Drive-by Truckers for Emotionally and Politically Searing ‘The Beautiful Madness’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

Jerry Joseph’s The Beautiful Madness could just as easily be titled “The Brilliant Madness.” Yes, this should be a contender for Album of the Year in roots-rock circles. It is stunning. Produced by his friend, and now fellow Portland, OR resident Patterson Hood, who recruited his own Drive-by Truckers to back Joseph. The album is uncannily timely as Portland remains one of the hottest centers of political protest and one devastating song, “Dead Confederate” speaks to racism more powerfully than almost any other song you could name. Joseph more than understands the darker side of the human condition and explores some of the unspoken aspects of relationships and truths about ourselves that we’d rather keep hidden. This is the album that Hood and Joseph had talked about for years and finally got to make. It comes highly anticipated and maybe you have already heard some singles or seen the video for “Days of Heaven.”

Hood holds Joseph in high esteem as one of the greatest songwriters of his generation. His goal was to capture the songs in their purest element without many embellishments. He says that Joseph brought in some of the best songs he’s ever written and threw himself into each performance. For his part, Joseph claims that Hood read him perfectly and found the soul, and ridded the excess out of every note, pushing him to places he didn’t even know existed. The DBTs, of course, having grown up in the legacy of the Muscle Shoals session recording scene, have lent their support before to albums for Bettye LaVette and Booker T. Jones. Oh, and lest we forget, the liners by Patterson Hood are absolutely a MUST READ.

The album was recorded at bassist Matt Patton’s studio, Dial Back Sound, in Water Valley, Mississippi with chief engineer Bronson Tew. The two have collaborated on many projects, perhaps most notably on albums for Jimbo Mathus. Joseph christened the band The Stiff Boys. All current DBTs played live on the recording except for Mike Cooley who dubbed in guitar and banjo parts later. Schaefer Llana sang harmonies and vocals. The album was recorded in six days. Besides Cooley’s parts, Jason Isbell added a poignant slide guitar to “Dead Confederate,” Kyleen King played viola on some tracks, and Little Sue Weaver added harmonies. Adam Lee mixed the album in Portland.

“Days of Heaven” is named after the Terrence Malick film. Hood says, “Like the film, it’s filled with beautiful imagery that paints a picture while leaving itself wide open for your interpretation.” You’ll hear the line “with my brother’s .45 at my side” in the song. Joseph’s songwriting process begins with a list of titles taken from movies, books, road signs, and wherever he can find them. With a compiled list in hand, he headed to his brother’s house in El Sauzal, Mexico intending to write the songs. The site is on a gorgeous bluff overlooking the ocean but, in an area teeming with gangs from the drug cartels. Thus, Joseph relates, “At his insistence, I kept the .45 action off, on the table with my iPad and notepaper for the few days I was to write, adding a weird vibe to the songs I was writing.”

“Bone Towers” is about the unraveling of a relationship with imagery from the skeletal structures of unfinished skyscrapers, left to blow in the wind after the fall of Saddam Hussein. (Joseph has spent considerable time touring in the Middle East, Asia, South America and South Africa, among other places). “(I’m in love with) Hyrum Black” is a ‘Mormon Outlaw Cowboy Song’ steeped in blood, religion, and desert air. The late John Barlow who wrote with Jerry Garcia, called it one of the greatest songs he’s ever heard. “Good” is both a prayer for his children and a curse upon the darker forces of culture and politics infused lines such as “If anyone has any soul anymore, to cash in for psalm to answer for our sins.” On the other hand, “Full Body Echo,” also released as a video and single, is the rare feel-good song written in South Africa when Joseph was touring. It’s about the way people of one’s past haunt their psyche, like ghosts.

”San Acacia” begins with few beautiful notes from Jay Gonzalez and morphs into an engaging song full of harmonies and the indelible chorus of “San Acacia…Won’t you take me as I am, As I am” Hood end his liner notes this way, referencing the song – “Jerry, to me is a cult figure who could, in some alternate reality, have easily been one of the biggest stars in the world. One of the greatest live performers I have ever seen and long one of my favorite songwriters. I can’t hear the chorus of “San Acacia” without picturing Jerry singing in front of 100,000 screaming fans, in a soccer stadium in Brazil.”

“Sugar Smacks,” the fourth single which also has a video,  a musical rant on the state of the world, a raw blast of emotion accompanied by a dizzying cinematic video, filled with footage from the global wanderer’s many travels over the years. The montage includes images of Joseph’s tours to Lebanon, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Israel, New Zealand, trips with his non-profit Nomad Music Foundation to Kurdish Iraq and Afghanistan and travels to Mumbai, Brazil and many more.  It’s a wild manifesto of sorts, a punk rocker spitting unrestrained anger at inhuman aspects of human nature, particularly at the horrific violence women face globally – ‘you can’t tell the pigs from the priests” among its many lines. “It might be the most punk rock song I’ve heard in twenty years (or more) and served as a gravitational pull throughout the making of this album,” adds Hood.

The song came together quickly, Joseph had a riff, pushed record on his phone, started ranting and 20 minutes later, “Sugar Smacks” was pretty much done. He muses, “It would be difficult to overstate the magic of the Drive-By Truckers digging into it. In Mississippi, at Dial Back Studios when we were recording, Bobby Matt Patton, DBT bass player, delivered an apocalyptic motherfucker of ground shaking bass line.” Hood recalls, “In recording ‘Sugar Smacks’, it was the evening of the fifth day of our six. With a little preparation, we cut it in one breathless take. Mike Cooley added a banjo part that played off of the insanity of the ride it takes you on. As a founding member of Drive-By Truckers, I place this track among my favorite moments of this band’s discography and the rest of them are in unanimous agreement with me about that.” “Black Star Line” was written in the late night/early morning in the hours following David Bowie’s passing. Joseph unleashed a searing guitar solo that takes the song from its quiet moments to a sexy, lush vibe and a Glam-influenced finale. “Eureka,” the album closer is a beautiful ode to Joseph’s mother, ending in a singalong crescendo.

Hopefully, you’re still with us. We’ve saved the best for last. “Dead Confederate” should receive consideration for “Song of the Year,” especially in this year of social and racial unrest. Hood claims he’s never been able to listen to it all the way through without experiencing chills and tearing up. He calls it the worthy successor to “Rednecks” from Randy Newman’s Good Old Boys, this from a songwriter who has written plenty of songs on the subject throughout his career. The song assails bigotry and hatred from the defiant voice of a confederate statue being torn down – “Swallowing my granite pride, they haul me out to gravel pits/Forget that I lived and dies, smash me up to chips and bits/Buying selling humans was good work if you could get it/Well the South could build great pyramids or rise up if you let it.”

Originally Joseph did not intend to put the song on the album but did so at Hood’s insistence, with Joseph playing and singing with no accompaniment. He cut it in the control room in one take, completely usurping all the emotion in the room. After spending a couple of months with it they added Jason Isbell’s vintage slide guitar part which truly punctuates the song. Kyleen King played viola and Hood joined in on the last chorus.

This is a one-of-a-kind devastating album that needs your immediate attention.