RAMSAY MIDWOOD
Shoot Out At The OK Chinese Restaurant (Vanguard)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale

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Ramsay Midwood's Shoot Out At The OK Chinese Restaurant is almost the quintessential American album, which makes its path to its US release somewhat surprising. Before coming to the attention of Vanguard Records honcho Kevin Welk, who knew a good thing when he heard it, the album was released on a German label and became something of a European sensation. I'm not sure what those European audiences thought they were hearing, but I'd rather they got their picture of regular American lives through this music than through films about cowboys and gangsters. Not that there's anything ordinary about the characters that inhabit Midwood's songs, but that's the point, really. There's nothing typical about anybody or anything in a country as diverse as the States, and Midwood makes that point with a series of vignettes that paint evocative pictures of the extraordinary nature of everyday life for his characters.

Musically he's assimilated the sounds of the Delta and the plains, drawing deeply on tradition but putting his own original, contemporary spin on the age-old styles that inform him. The result is exactly what I think of when someone says "Americana" to me, and something I hardly ever hear on an album labeled "Americana." His voice brings to mind a folky Leon Redbone, without the sense of affectation that Redbone sometimes offers. You may not always understand exactly what he's singing about the first time through, but you believe that he means what he's saying, and that's enough to inspire the replays that will make his point of view apparent to the attentive. People are strange, whether you're a stranger or not. In most cases, that's what makes them worth hearing about, and there's nobody out there better at telling you about them right now than Ramsay Midwood.

Track List:

Chicago * Mohawk River * Monster Truck * Feed My Monkey * Esther * Waynesboro * Spinnin' On This Rock * Alligator's Lament * Heaven's Toll * Grass'll Grow * Fisherman's Friend * Dreary Life

© 2002 - Shaun Dale