Martha Fields
Southern White Lies
texasmartha.com
AS far as I can tell, the appearances by Martha Fields Galloway with her band at this year's Southern Fried in Perth was her debut in Scotland, although she is domiciled in Bordeaux these days and her instrumental compadres are French, no matter how authentically American they sound. The music on this disc, belatedly winning a full UK release at the very end of 2016, was what she was playing then, and it marked something of a change of direction from her 2014 debut, as Texas Martha, on Long Way From Home.
At the time of the Perth weekend, the race for the White House was just hotting up, and tunes like the closing American Hologram made no bones about which side she stood with in that contest. In fact she has acknowledged that her family contains as many who surely voted for Trump, so the album takes on a slightly wistful hue in the light of how all that worked out. In fact the quartet of originals, including the title track, stand out stronger, and just as impressive is Martha's way with Janis Joplin's What Good Can Drinkin' Do, the traditional Lonesome Road Blues and Jimmy Rodgers' California Blues.
Keith Bruce
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