- RECENT PRESS -
Biblical Bones: A Review of Gordy Quist's Here Comes the Flood
by Kimberly Caterino, WRUV Radio
Burlington, VT
In this post-Katrina era, a CD entitled Here Comes the Flood is sure to raise an eyebrow, especially for a CD recorded south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Guitarist and singer/songwriter Gordy Quist took a week off from playing in one of Austin, Texas' most substantial and hardest-gigging bands, The Band of Heathens, to record Here Comes on analog tape amidst juju beads and vintage amps in East Nashville. In a note penned to the listener on the inside of the CD cover, Quist informs: "No digital undo. No cut and paste. Just vibe"… and vibe truly permeates this impressive set of soul-searching, cross-country songs. Quist's second solo CD does not reference hurricanes or the flood that set Noah afloat, however the CD lives up to its ominous title: Here Comes is musically and lyrically full of bare-bones human struggle, sometimes in Biblical proportions. The flood of the CD's punchy and harmonica-infused opener, "Rehab Facility", however, is actually the rush of addictive love flowing through one's veins, and the ship that sails in this collection can be found in the fiddle-laced "Lady Juliana", narrating the historical vessel that carried over 200 women convicts on the 1789 colonial voyage from Britain to Australia. Here Comes takes a listener down rattlesnake roads in the traveling stroll of "Quarters and Dimes" to a Quaalude Highway in the danceable roadhouse blues of "Unsleeping Eye", arriving unmercifully at "Paradise Awaiting": "I hear Paradise is waiting/ you can see it from down on your knees/ The Faithful from a distance strain to see/ the preacher from the bleacher seats." The CD climaxes and delivers more Biblical allusion in the galloping "Judas 'Scariot Blues", a haunting depiction of the fated Apostle who betrayed Jesus Christ for 30 pieces of silver. Recorded in Joe McMahan's Nashville studio, "cradled between halfway houses and soul food joints", Here Comes is musically enhanced by Hammonds, Wurlitzers, and upright bass: it lives up to Quist's intention to capture the feeling of "[j]ust people in a room making music." Here Comes the Flood offers up the human desperation of longing that leads us to the grit of travel, and if it is representative of what he (and his generation) have to contribute to the Texas singer/songwriter tradition, let's hope he's right about that flood.
