Bad Dog Records
2008
The Works
About This Album
A full decade after Billy Bragg and Wilco teamed up to set to music unrecorded lyrics of Woody Guthrie on Mermaid Avenue, now Jonatha Brooke has done the same. Unsurprisingly, she takes quite a different approach than they did, starting with her choice of co-producer, Bob Clearmountain, whose mountain of production and engineering credits have run the gamut from Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones to Sheryl Crow and Brooke's previous release, Careful What You Wish For. Here Clearmountain goes for a slim, shimmering sound that emphasizes Guthrie's words and Brooke's delivery over the music's sonic properties. But that's not to slight the rest of the crew here, which includes some of the finest jazz and pop musicians working today: Christian McBride on acoustic bass, Steve Gadd on drums, Joe Sample and Mitchell Froom on keyboards, and a handful of A-list guests including Hiram Bullock, Derek Trucks, and Eric Bazilian on guitars; Gil Goldstein on accordion; and three tracks featuring a pedal steel played by Greg Leisz. The Guthrie material, though it includes some political and social commentary, largely trends toward the romantic and the personal. "All You Gotta Do Is Touch Me," from whose lyrics the album's title is drawn, places Brooke (who also provides guitar and piano on the album) in a vocal duet with Keb' Mo', and it's about as naked and confessional a lyric as Guthrie ever wrote: "I fully aim to get my soul known again/As the maniac, the saint, the sinner, the drinker, the thinker, the queer/I am the works, the whole works/And it's not till you have called me one of these things/That I feel satisfied.
Track List

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