New Music Review: Sauntering Down “Wisdom Road”

By Justin Ringsak, Unfiltered 4-18-08

Butte, Montana has always been full of stories, legends, tall tales and the stuff of history that is the meat and potatoes of folk songs. Mining culture, the violent birth of the labor movement, the class struggles, the cosmopolitan industrialism, and the environmental situation practically beg to be put to song. Despite this abundance of material to draw from, today we have few folk songs about Butte.

I suspect that there were many more in the distant past that simply were never recorded and are now as lost as the old neighborhoods of Meaderville and McQueen that were swallowed by the Berkeley Pit. As it stands, the only overt Butte folk tune I’m aware of in the professional music world is U. Utah Phillips’ “Look for Me in Butte”, although Storyhill's "Mary on the Mountain", about the Virgin Mary statue that surveys Butte from atop the Continental Divide, just about fits the bill. The city’s resident folkie, Mark Ross, who was featured on the U. Utah track, certainly wrote or knew a few more, but he took off years back and left no recordings behind. Now Butte singer/songwriter Chad Okrusch is stepping up to fill in the Butte folk song void with Wisdom Road, a collection of mostly original songs that remain firmly anchored in the specifics of Butte’s corner of Montana while still managing the difficult trick of feeling general and universal enough to appeal to anyone who enjoys a solid chorus and good melody.

The music is firmly versed in the folk tradition, recorded with a minimal approach that pays off in spades, allowing Okrusch’s songs to speak for themselves against a spacious, wide open backdrop that gives the lyrics room to roam, an apt choice considering the subject matter being mined here: open rivers, tragedy and loss, yearnings for home, and a love for place, all with an undercurrent of humor and struggle. Minimal instrumentation also allows the individual sounds to tickle the eardrum- just take a listen to Robert Frahm’s guitar drift, dusty and breezy, over the top of “Opportunity Blues”, or the guitar atmospherics at play on the emotional centerpiece of the album, the tragic “The Angel Mariah”.

Occasional injections of upright bass courtesy of Butte’s resident blues veteran, Brian MacGregor, and percussion by Michael McDaniel keep things moving without trying to move too much. This is a confident and experienced rhythm section that is more focused on songcraft than on oohs, ahs, fills and tricks. And it works solidly, directing the listener’s attention to Okrusch’s words and performance. Okrusch’s guitar sounds very natural and free from studio tinkering. As the guitar also carries the rhythmic and melodic basis for most of these songs, it works well mixed front-and-center, a refreshing change from most folk-ish major label recording these days, which tend to bury rhythmic acoustic guitars beneath syrupy layers of instrumentation.

The production, by Bozeman resident Chris Cunningham, one-half of the respected folk duo Storyhill, is clean as a whistle. There is no unnecessary note on this album, no excessive overdubbing or post-production muddle, and small additions here and there, such as the occasional background vocal harmony from Cunningham, give each of Okrusch’s songs their own unique feel, while still allowing the album as a whole to feel like, well, a cohesive album rather than a bunch of singles.

But the real stars of Wisdom Road are the songs themselves. You can hear the work that went into the songwriting. There are no throwaway lines, no self-indulgent bridges, these are audible expressions of experience. And the range of that emotion can be disarming. The album begins with “Big Hole River”, a poetic tribute to one of Montana’s great trout streams that immediately draws the listener onto the Wisdom Road with a great lyrical hook: “You were young once, you sang the creek song.” It's a simple line, and very effective. In Montana, they are few that cannot relate to being in young and messing around in the neighborhood creek. The track is effective in describing why we value such wild places, but it also conveys a subtle concern: if we don’t respect places like the Big Hole, they could flow right on by us. It is a good example of how Okrusch manages to take moral stances in his tunes without coming off righteous or preachy.

“Meet Me at the M&M” is perhaps the best example of all the things this album does well, all wrapped up in one single tune. It’s a funny and fun-loving song that also carries a sense of longing and loss. It’s chock-full of local Montana color, but equally accessible to a listener from New York City. The music has an ease about it that leaves room for everything without sounding empty. In other words, it’s a winner.

The album then shifts gears with “Opportunity Blues”, where Okrusch plays the role of a traveler looking for the town of Wisdom down on the Big Hole, and instead finds himself in Opportunity, a little town that sits next to the biggest repository of mine waste in Montana, where he is advised that it is “better not to breathe the air”. The song has overtones of social justice, but it works because it isn’t a polemic, but instead lays out the situation in Opportunity through storytelling and humor.

The emotional heft of the album can be felt a few tracks later in “The Angel Mariah”, a haunting tune about Mariah McCarthy, a Butte teenager who was killed by a drunk driver. It is subject matter that could easily misfire into melodrama, but Okrusch has crafted a masterful tune about innocence and loss. No blame is given for Mariah’s tragedy, and a song that could easily be about despair is instead channeled into hope. Okrusch’s vocal performance here is also a highlight, building from rhythmic whispers into a soaring chorus. The album is rounded out with covers of John Prine’s “Bottom of a Well”, a funny and vivacious number that propels the album along, and Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” which fits in well thematically with the rest of the album.

Okrusch’s unnamed protagonist in “Opportunity Blues” might not have found the Wisdom he was looking for, but Wisdom Road is an apt title for this album, not because it offers any concrete wisdom, but because it is looking for wisdom and instead finding reality, and it makes no bones about it. Turns out, when heard through music like this, reality might be bittersweet, but it is also nice and easy on the ears and the spirit.

Disclaimer: The author contributed some trumpet to “Opportunity Blues”, so he is horribly, horribly biased, and is a terrible person for even writing this review.

For more: http://www.chadokrusch.com/home.html

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