Danny Schmidt
Owls
(Live Once)
As anyone who has caught him live will confirm, Danny Schmidt is a self-contained Texan troubadour. His guitar is a six-string orchestra-cum-dance band accompanying a voice that carries vulnerability, a sense of wonder and firm determination. Seven albums into his career, however, he really should be reaching a wider audience and Owls, which was conceived as a band album, might just be the vehicle to take him there. Like the writers he reveres - Dylan and Cohen are two - Schmidt is a poet. In Cry On The Flowers' ill-starred heroine he sees "a beauty so composed the notes might cry" but his words can hit hard too (The Guns & The Crazy Ones disdains gun crimes and school shootings). The loose-limbed, bar-band rhythms, weeping slide and hard-edged guitars of his session confreres add just the right weight and atmosphere to his brilliantly sustained descriptions and poetic allegories while his partner, Carrie Elkin, is one of a trio of backing vocalists aptly complementing Schmidt's lived-in, heartfelt singing.
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