Ross Fortune gets back to basics with American song man Jeff Finlin.

Cars glide slow out of downtown Nashville (an area that is both museum for the elders and playground to the kids).   Just south of Broadway’s divide is Music Row.  Keep going.  Not on to Hillsboro Village or Greenhills (leafy home to Emmy, Lucinda and more), but across 440 and over the tracks.  The streets grow quieter now, with names evocative of a different America – Utah Avenue, Nebraska, Dakota, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming.   Jeff Finlin lives round here – not too far from the heart of things, yet sort of on the edge.   Like many others of different breed and similar ilk, he is thriving in the margins.

Finlin has just released his third album, ‘Somewhere South of Wonder’.   Although it marks a step forward in terms of maturity, sweep, depth and cohesion, it shares with its predecessors a very real sense of people and place.   A feel for the country that wrought him and shaped him.   The songs are simultaneously of and from, in time and at one with America.

“Yeah, I like it when you can smell the cotton candy and rotten hot dogs”, he says, settling back with a coffee in a cushioned chair on the waxed wood floor of his tastefully bohemian living room where the album (belying its lush sound) was mostly recorded.

“I go to Ohio”, he continues.   “And you see an Amish guy lugging apples at the orchard, or slicing cheese, and there it is… It’s just the f***in’ pilgrims right there.   Or I’m in a bar somewhere in California and the bartender’s got this big bushy moustache, and he’s serving me a whisky, and I can feel his dad or his grandfather who was serving the loggers.  I see history a lot in places I go.  That’s what moves me.”

Finlin has been settled in Nashville now for 15 years.  He lives there with his wife Karen and their seven-year-old son Aidan. 

“I’ve lived in New York and Boston and Los Angeles”, he says, ”and sure, Nashville is a little white bread, but there’s a sense of history here.  I mean different musical centres all go back to something else.   In New York, it’s Tin Pan Alley, but here it’s kinda cool.   Here it goes back to the blues from Mississippi and the folk and country of the mountains.”

Unusually for a singer and songwriter, Finlin’s own pre-history involved drumming with a variety of undistinguished pop rock bands.   (Best known are probably The Thieves, though he also played drums on the first Tom Ovans album in 1991).   Influences include the usual – Dylan, Stones, Warren Zevon, Neil Young.   “But who’s not influenced by Dylan!” he fired.   “Lyrically he opened the door.   I mean he was stealing a lot from the Beats.   After they came around – Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac - I don’t think people looked at words the same.  I love playing with words and phrasing.  It’s like being a drummer and incorporating the words and the rhythm into that. 

Certainly, tracks from the new album – ‘Good Time’, ‘Miracle Along The Way’, ‘Delta Down’ and the haunted and haunting standout ‘Alchemy’ – all attest to a deft lyrical style and subtly honed song-smithery, while his voice – a dry, pinched and parched drawl – emotes terse and tender to a music that is crisp and ripe and clean.   The effect is to haunt and affect.   “Writing to me is completing an idea”, he says.

“I grew up listening to white guys singing the blues, and talking about what influenced them.  I didn’t know who Howling Wolf was, or Muddy Waters, until I read interviews with Keith Richards.  I feel sorry for kids today because there’s no trail back…

“I mean, I’m not one of those big music freaks”, he laughs.  “I’ve got a lot of friends, all they do is eat, sleep and breathe music, but I’ve kind of stepped away from that a bit.   I used to define myself as a songwriter but now that’s just part of what I do or who I am, and I think it’s a lot more healthy that way.”

In front of him on the floor lies a copy of John Fante’s “Ask the Dust”, spread open, face down beside an open notebook of words and drawings.   “I used to think I had to struggle”, he says, “and I was afraid that if I didn’t achieve a certain level – career wise and status wise and fame wise – then I was a failure.   But I’ve realised that all I’m really responsible for is the work.   Everything else is kinda out of my hands.  I make the records and put them out and whatever comes back, comes back.  I’ve tried the other way – beating on doors and chasing it – but that doesn’t really work for me.”   He allows a short pause.  “I mean I don’t drive a Cadillac, but that’s okay.”

Somewhere South of Wonder is out now on Gravity/BMG.  Jeff Finlin plays the Borderline on Oct 5.

Time Out London
September 25-October 2 2002