Eventually, it became, of all things, an attorney’s office Poppycock on Cower and old Victorian house that used to sell candles, incense, “black light” posters. The original Herbert Hoover on Middlefield Road across from SafewayĮddie’s Coffee Shop and their Milkshakes with the Mixing Container Say yes.A&W Root Beer stand on Middlefield Road – where the Safeway is now It’s an open invitation from a man who’s found home. Southland Mission lights up tradition with rare and overt joy and palpable gratitude. To have is not necessarily to hold, and when possession is transient, belonging is all you have. "Gone" is a parable about how you might as well give it all you’ve got when you can’t take anything with you. "Anybody Else", a duet with Frazey Ford, sees Cook resisting easy reassurances in favor of a deep and nourishing love. Ultimately, choosing to stay and stoke life’s intimacies wins out over fleeing. "Nothing sacred, nothing saved/ Get your ass on the morning train or get the hell out the way," he sings on "Great Tide", an empathetic epic that swings between tender moments and brisk, reeling jubilation. "1922" is a cover of a Charlie Parr song about the Piedmont musician’s parents’ Depression-era experiences, where "ain’t it sweet" becomes "ain’t that the way it is." Fed up of giving all his money to the government, a boy leaves his dead end job, gets beat up in a new town, and, dead broke, has no choice but to go back home: "Times are hard here and I can’t roam/ But I ain’t got nothing more." Every verse ends with Cook addressing some "boys," like it’s a tale of bar stool bravado, though choice is never treated as an act of heroism on Southland Mission. Like Hiss Golden Messenger’s Lateness of Dancers, Southland Mission handles doubt with the possibility of redemption, reinforced by the record’s persistent, joyous uplift.Ĭook navigates the extremes of the squeezed middle class on Southland Mission, staring down what it looks like to fight or flee. They’re crucial to the record’s two-part centerpiece: chastising Cook for procrastinating on "Sitting on a Fence Too Long" before coming to "Lowly Road", a bluesy spiritual reckoning, which ends with a call-and-response as the duo welcome him home. community behind the record (the likes of Matt McCaughan, Mountain Man’s Amelia Meath) beams through as its own kind of congregation, though there’s occasionally a homespun gospel duo here, too, in the golden tones of Sophie Blak and Jeanne Jolly. Recorded in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the warmth of the Durham, N.C. And like any good missionary, Cook’s fervor is infectious.Īlthough Southland Mission is studiously steeped in tradition, it wears it lightly. Whether simple banjo fare, outlaw stompers, or reeling strut, each one of Cook’s modes is an easy and infectious exertion. Southland Mission is a more full-bodied commitment. In 2011 he released Hungry Mother Blues, a low-key solo instrumental record that chased Ry Cooder and John Fahey. White and Hiss Golden Messenger, acted as bandleader for the Blind Boys of Alabama, and produced for Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray. He played gorgeous, doleful folk rock in Megafaun, complemented the cohorts of Matthew E. "I didn’t realize it had to come out of me, but it had to." A decade ago, Cook moved his family from Wisconsin-where he was a member of Bon Iver’s orbit-to North Carolina, lured by the music of the Delta, Bayou, and Appalachia. That’s the stuff, right there-not that carrying on is as simple as just saying so Cook spends much of Southland Mission attempting to find the way, just as the path to this he record was its own calling.
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