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Clay Steakley is a Nashville-based writer and musician. He contributes reviews and features to several publications, plays bass, and performs session and live sideman duties for various artists.
Southpaw Jones
One in the Door,
One in the Grave
Produced by Southpaw
Jones & Nathan Whitehead
Southpaw Jones' songs are at once political, personal, serious, lucid, and muddled. His CD One in the Door, One in the Grave is simple, beautiful, and truthful. Recorded on a friend's porch over a few nights and mornings, the only sounds that grace the record other than Jones' guitar, voice, and harmonica are the scraping of crickets, passing cars, dogs, and other incidental additions that happened to sneak onto the tape. The importance of the cricket can't be underestimated. That sound, combined with the hushed strumming of the five-string guitar and Jones' half-whispered vocals, create a collection of songs so intimate that, by the third track, you feel like you're sitting on that porch listening to Jones try his songs out on you.
The actual texts of the songs are straight-forward and barely adorned with imagery or metaphor. Instead, Jones goes straight for the story, for the message, for the emotion. Whether he's discussing the state of contemporary culture, anxiety over his future, or the trade of a free piece of pie for confession, Jones stays honest and personal.
Southpaw Jones
P.O. Box 150938
Nashville, TN 37215-0938
southpaw@southpawjones.com
www.southpawjones.com