I’m in my Durango, driving across New York State for an Iroquois Medicine Walk. It’s a four hour drive and I’ve got all that time to think and listen to Grant Peeple’s latest CD, “Pawnshop”. I had listened to a few sample tracks on his website and offered to review the whole album if he’d send me one.
“Pawnshop” is a collection of songs about the seamier and seedier side of American life in this new millennium. As Grant is the writer of most of these songs, I deduce that this gruff sounding troubadour has the heart and soul of a poet. My thoughts are confirmed long before track four, where he tells us all outright that he knows why poets smoke and drink. The poet observes the world about him and closes himself to none of it, letting the sad, the sweet, the beautiful, the good, the bad, the ugly and the whole experience fill his soul until it comes out in his songs. This isn’t a CD you put in if you just want to be tickled a little with some background music. It’s a great album for driving and thinking about life in general.
The first tune is “Searching For A Sign” and my personal favorite on the whole album. Back in the days of the 45rpm’s, this would have been my choice for the “hit single” on this album. The Spanish guitar strums a south-of-the-border rhythm that has me caught up and grooving’ on the veranda of a fine hacienda with Grant Peeples and maybe Carlos Santana (who is nowhere to be found on this album), smoking some funny cigarettes, sipping tequila and searching for a sign of where this whole thing is going to take us. It’s an excellent start to this CD because I’m up for the journey now.
Next on the menu is “Leaving Her Was Easy”. Done in a classic country style with the usual array of steel guitars and fiddles, Grant throws us some hardcurves and doesn’t sugar coat his messages very much. It sticks with the“sad and sweet” theme of the album and I find myself surprised to hear thatnormally raw and gruff voice has a soft side to it. I won’t spoil the song by telling you how it ends.Number three song is “There’s A Bluebird In My Heart” and it’s dedicated to a fellow named Charles Bukowski. Contrary to the song’s declaration of keeping that bluebird locked up, Grant lets it loose and it flies through this song and well into the rest of the album.The fourth track, I’ve already mentioned: “I Know Why The Poets Drink And Smoke.” I also mentioned that Grant doesn’t sugar coat very much on this album and like the umpire said: “I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em.” That’s Grant’s style. This is not the kind of music you put on to feel giddy and goofy. This is thinkin’ music much in the same venue as “sippin’ whiskey”; you’ve got to take your time and mull it over and find the sweetness hidden deep within the bite of it. I can do that. I still have hours and hours of highway to pass under my wheels and nobody in this vehicle but me and Grant, and I’m in a listening mood.
I’m sure you’ve all heard more than a few of the all time country greats sing about their simple and bucolic country upbringing. But nine times out of ten, when you step out of your car to visit a country cousin, you’re confronted with a very different story than sweet Dolly crooned to you. Grant’s been there and “Real Country” is a song reflecting the other side of that coin.
As a writer I’ve often prided myself at being able to write a chapter or two that can wring a tear out of my readers or get them to “whoop” a cheer in the muted confines of a library as they read my works. Grant displays that he’s no new comer to this great craft as he takes us through the heart wrenching experience of “The Saddest Thing.” It sort of makes me want to go out and beat the bejeebers out of a pawn shop dealer, or maybe some soulless, corporate snake for selling out our livelihoods or somebody for Christ sake. Geez! How can some people sleep at night after putting their siblings through this kind of hell. Okay, I’m taking a few deep breaths and collecting myself and moving on to the next track…
The seventh track rocks on in and introduces us to “My Side Of The City.” It brings back memories of my younger days and sounds a lot like several cities I’ve lived in at any given time. This side can be found in L.A., Denver, Cleveland and Anytown, USA. I finally got out…barely, but life goes on there. It’s not just a life, it’s an adventure! The eighth song is also the title track of this CD, “Pawnshop”. Here, I’m wondering what’s with Grant’s fixation on these establishments? The answer, of course, is in the song. As you look inside, all the merchandise on the walls and in the counter displays, represents the hard times in somebody’s life when they had to trade in a treasured possession for a little cash to carry them through or just buy enough food to keep body and soul together a little longer when things just might get better… if luck finally smiles. No. It’s not the pawnshops that Grant is fixated upon. It’s the human heart.
Better Jobs Down In Richmond” is the one song on this CD that Grant didn’t write. It sticks with the overall theme of the album, but leaves us with an element of hope of maybe finding a better life somewhere else, this side of heaven. Serendipity punches me right in the gut. The traffic slows to a crawl and ahead, in the distance, I can make out some flashing lights and wonder what has happened. Grant and the sweet vocals of Carrie Hamby are singing about “The Hanging”. It’s a carnival event of humanity come to see a killer get their ‘just desserts’. A lone woman weeps on the steps of the gallows and says plainly that she doesn’t even know the condemned man, but is weeping for those of us who have become so desensitized to our own humanity that we would find this entertaining. Of the two lanes on this highway, the one is blocked by a traffic accident and the other is reduced to a crawl and the cars file by and rubberneck the devastation hoping to get a glimpse of a bloody ending. A stray tear rolls down my cheek as the tune I’m listening to gets sung directly to my heart.
In this last track, I hear myself back in my pagan days. “Jesus Was A Revolutionary” describes him as dying in “the electric chair of his day”. I used to say that if he died today, Christians would all be wearing batteries around their necks. Except, the chair was meant to be a quick death, while the cross was as slow and painful as anyone of the time could imagine. Even so, I have to admit the life of this great man changed everything. Regardless of ardent followers and dogma, old habits die hard and return in new ways and someone else will come along to stir up men’s hearts and make them look at things anew. I think Grant is telling us all, in his own way, that we should all be re-assessing our situations and looking at them anew. It’s really a sad state we’re living in and if we don’t want to keep hearing the same sad old songs over and over, we need to find a better way of doing things and change this tune.
I’ve still got some miles to go on down this road. I guess we all do. The songs were sad, sweet and a little rough in places, but they left me in a very productive frame of mind. Thanks Grant!
