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Rambunctious roots rock

An American duo brings a bracing blast from the past
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By Darrell Jónsson
For The Prague Post
February 20th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Robert Gordon, left, found a good fit for his throwback vocal style in ace session guitarist Chris Spedding.
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Robert Gordon & Chris Spedding

Secret 9 Beat
When: Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 6:30
Where: Roxy
Tickets: 390 Kč in advance, 440 Kč at the door

“I guess you can say I was in the right place at the right time” is how Robert Gordon sees the launch of his career during the 1970s. To be exact, the right time was 1976, and the place was New York City, where clothing store owner Gordon joined a band called the Tuff Darts and began throwing his distinctly ’50s persona and voice around.
Unlike groups like The Ramones, who borrowed a few elements of ’50s and ’60s rock, Gordon’s approach to seizing the ’70s moment was to turn the clock even further back. Leaving the Tuff Darts in 1977, he teamed up with the late ’50s guitar legend Link Wray. A Native American Music Hall of Fame inductee who directly influenced Neil Young’s more dirt-drenched guitar moments, Wray was an electrifying catalyst in solidifying Gordon’s roots-rock vision. Together they generated the raw excitement of rockabilly’s earliest Sun Studios and Louisiana Hay Ride sessions.
Although classified as rockabilly, Gordon has also been compared to Otis Redding, as well as early Elvis Presley. His aversion to being neatly categorized shares depth with the “cosmic American music” that Gram Parsons mined in the ’60s. Like Gordon, Parsons would eventually work with former Presley band members, painting his sound with fine brush strokes interlacing country and western, blues and rock.
As a native of Maryland, Gordon was in a good place to develop genre crossovers. “Growing up so close to Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, I automatically heard lots of black music,” he says. “In the early days it was called rhythm and blues, and later soul music. Living so close to Virginia and southern Maryland, I also heard country and rockabilly music. I was exposed to lots of great music at an early age.”
When Gordon and Wray split in 1978, Gordon again demonstrated an uncanny knack for latching onto rock’s most adept guitar slingers by inviting Chris Spedding to join his lineup. Earlier in the ’70s, Spedding’s brilliant guitar work had contributed to Jack Bruce’s critically acclaimed solo LPs Songs for Tailor and Harmony Row. Outside of the Jack Bruce band, Spedding was already a fixture of the UK scene as a session player and solo artist. Before and since, Spedding’s skill with production and session work has abetted artists as diverse as Elton John, Paul McCartney, the Sex Pistols and the Cramps.
Spedding’s last solo work, 2005’s Click Clack (on the SPV label), shows his ongoing capacity to tackle a variety of material with amazing nuance. With creds that include work with musical sophisticates Nucleus, Robert Wyatt, Carla Bley and Micheal Mantler, Spedding’s fretwork is as emotive with complex jazz tendrils as it is with its basic roots.
Given Spedding’s diverse career and Gordon’s ongoing immersion in rockabilly, many have wondered where it would all lead in the new century. In 2006, Gordon and Spedding joined Elvis Presley’s famous backup singers, The Jordanaires, to create the Rykodisc CD It’s Now or Never. Gordon and Spedding’s spin on Elvis is close to form, yet varies in some important ways. As Gordon says, “As far as recording goes, from what I heard, Presley would record numerous takes of a song before being satisfied. I record as live as possible, and I often use my original performance on a song rather than overdub it.”
Carrying the same sort of spontaneity to their stage act, Gordon and Spedding have yet to deviate from the vitality of the simple, three-piece cracker rock band backing a dynamic vocalist. On stage, the result is far more convincing that any posed hillbilly throwback. As original rocker Jerry Lee Lewis once verified, “Robert Gordon is the real deal.”
Opening for Gordon and Spedding will be Prague’s own Secret 9 Beat, performing songs from their recently released self-titled debut CD on Ignore Alien Orders Records. Secret 9 Beat has a raucous, Stooges-influenced sound that is as fun as it is noisy.

Darrell Jónsson can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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