MyVil

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Wurlitzer Dawgs Out!


Wurlitzer Dawgs Out!
Big Kenny; Jon Nicholson
by Don Allred
October 7th, 2005 3:27 PM Issue 41

Jon Nicholson listens to the silence.
photo: Kristen Barlowe
Big Kenny
Live a Little
Hollywood
Stream "Candy Colored Glasses" (Windows Media)
Stream "Under the Sun" (Windows Media)
Jon Nicholson
A Lil Sump'm Sump'm
Warner Bros.
Stream "Just a Man"
(Windows Media)
Stream "Love is Alright" (Windows Media)

Live a Little, Big Kenny's pre-Big & Rich solo album, finally given a proper release on The Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records, brings the
noise candy, not the nose candy. It's a slowly spinning saucer, serving up a skyful of Purple Planetberries,
bursting on cue, presented 2 U by B.K., a psych-pop-goes-thee-country impresario and aw-shucks-ma'am workaday wizard, bopping through amber waves with his drum machine. Kenny's as much wistful crooner as carny barker when singing through a megaphone-like vocoder
about "a place where dreams come true." He gets his comeuppance in "Cheater's
Lament." Even more so, in "Think Too Much," with virtual drumsticks bouncing off
the cello-and-viola cloud growing around his (Traveling Wilburys-flavored) Orbisonic orbit.
The better, it seems, for a graceful lift of his feathered top hat to "Dor-oh-thee, and
Lit-tle To-To," flying by in "Rather Be."
Down here on the ground, where the air is brown  and El Lay meets Nash Vegas,
Big Kenny's compadre young Jon Nicholson listens to the silence all night
long. Oh, he can soul-shout all he wants to, but li'l pauses keep getting in
between the spooky teeth of Wurlitzer piano on his debut joint, A Lil Sump'm
Sump'm. He can dream about a blissfully rolling, Michael Hurley-worthy "Grass River," and a "Grandma" who gets high and flies to glory, with Big & Rich as escorts
on the chorus. But he'll wake up, shook up by a girl who "steps to the car," tapping on the glass, to ask if he's cool. Probably meaning, "Are you a cop? And/or about to attract one?"
But he's shivering: "Well, how would I know, how does anybody
know?" 'Til he's sounding like, without or even with the buzz, is he, will he be, a gotta-be-me seeker, or  (might-as-well-be) peddling covers on just another dead end street---either way, sashaying toward a squinted-out sell-by date? "If you listen to yourself, you're just lying to yourself." But, no, actually, it's OK. Jon's cool.


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