Searching For The Old American West In Song - The Music Of Tom Russell

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Tom Russell performing "Tonight We Ride."

CD Review

Borderland, Tom Russell, Hightone Records, 2001

The last time that I reviewed a CD by the singer/songwriter Tom Russell was his album, about the Irish disapora- “The Man From God Knows Where”. Hey, wait a minute- how can you go from the Irish diaspora to searching for the Old American West like that? Well, that answer is easy- not all the Irish stayed in the Eastern cities after heading out of the old country over the past 150 years or so. Some, like members of other ethnic groups, headed west when things dried up or got too “hot” in the East.

That is the common design for Russell’s drive to find the key to the old West, and to sing of it, to sing of it like Walt Whitman did in his poetry that sang of America. Although the unabashed promise that Whitman sang of has turned somewhat rancid and wearisome in the last hundred years or so that is where the meat of Russell’s work lies.

Take the song “Touch Of Evil” (title and subject from the classic Orson Welles film), for example, Russell captures the mean streets of the borders, between countries, cultures, and personal circumstances and exposes their hard edges. In short, my kind of songwriter. “Hills Of Old Juarez” and “Where The Dream Begins” are other outstanding examples of that same idea. If you too are searching for the meaning of the Old West, the real Old West, in song and the New West, as well, listen up here.

Touch Of Evil
Tom Russell

G C G C/G
The night my baby left me I crossed the bridge to Juarez avenue
C G C
Like that movie "Touch of evil" I got the Orson Wells, Marlene Dietrich
G
blues
C G
Where Orson walks in to the whore house and
C G C/G
Marlene says "Man, you look like hel l"
G
And Orson's chewing on a chocolate bar
C/G
as the l ights go on in the old Blue Star hotel
C Bm
"Read my future" says old Orson, "down inside the tea leaves of your cup"
Am
And she says " You ain't got no future, Hank,
C D G
I believe your f uture's all used up"

C G
Why don't you touch me anymore? Why don't you touch me anymore?
D G G7
Why do you run away and hide? You know it hurts me deep inside
C G
Why do you close the bedroom door? This is a brutal little war
D C G
What good is all this fightin' for if you don't touch me any more?

G C/G
(Chords like 1st verse, until notice)
G C G C/G
They shot "A touch of evil" in a Venice, California colo ny
C G
And I grew near those dead canals
C G
where they filmed the longest pan shot ever made
C G C G C/G
Now I'm thinking a bout the movie, the bar I'm in, the bridge, the Rio Grande
G C/G
Now I'm t hinking about my baby and the borderline 'tween a woman and a man
C Bm
I was d runk as Orson Wells the night I crawled backwards out the door

Am C D G
I was screaming "Baby, baby how come you touch me any more?"

CHORUS:

G C/G x3

(Chords like 2nd verse)
G C G C/G
Oh, some one rolled the credits on twenty years of love turned dark and raw
C G C G
Not a technicolor l ove film, it's a brutal document, it's film noir
C G C G C/G
And it's all played out on a borderline and the actors are tragically miscast
G C/G
Like a Mexican bur lesk show where the characters are wearing comic masks
C Bm
Oh, it's love and love alone I cry to the barmen in this Juarez water hole
Am C D G
As we raise a glass to Orson and "A touch of evil" livin' our souls

CHORUS: