A Hard Day's Work

I’m not sure what else to say about William Elliott Whitmore that I haven’t already said somewhere on here before. I was in awe the first time RJD played Song of the Blackbird for me and I’ve been in awe every time I’ve heard any of his other music since. To be able to create the way he does with nothing but a guitar, banjo and his own unmistakable voice is a gift that one doesn’t come across very often. His latest album, Field Songs, doesn’t break any new ground. Thank God.

Field Songs is a sort of country-folk concept album about a hard day of labor on the farm, a labor of love. It also conveys a great sense of optimism and hopefulness, somewhat in contrast to his previous album, the brilliant and politically charged Animals in the Dark. The album opens in the morning, the first strains being the sounds of birds chirping on the farm at dawn. Then the banjo kicks in as a sort of wake up call. WEW sings about letting the sun come up and urges us to not dwell on our troubles, but rather set forth on this day, forgetting the burdens of yesterday and focusing on the work that needs to be done today. The final sounds of this song are WEW echoing the banjo melody with a fading hum over the omnipresent sounds of the outdoors.

Next up is the title track, where the work gets started. Backed by strummed guitar, he sings about digging in the dirt and getting the job done. We get to hear him describe his thoughts of better days that lie ahead, concern about government and big industry encroaching on his livelihood and visions of seeing this thing through until the day he’ll lie in peace under the black locust tree. He then proves his mettle and aptitude for the task at hand on Don’t Need It by refusing the waking cane and requesting instead the hammer and saw, backed by the determination of the guitar and driving bass drum. This is a chest-thumping man song.

The pace then slows a bit on Everything Gets Gone, allowing us a moment to reflect our mortality. We’re reminded we’re just here for a little while; that life went on before us and will go on after we’re gone. I can’t help but think he had his parents in mind when he wrote this, both of them reportedly having passed away before he was barely out of high school.

The pace and mood pick up again on Let’s Do Something Impossible. For me, this is one of the standout tracks of the whole group and I love the optimism underscored by the historical allegories. He makes the listener feel like they can do anything they set out to do with the right mix of positive attitude and determination. This determination carries over to the rumbling Get There From Here. I love traveling songs like this. Songs like these are the ones I sing when I have to be away from home for a few days and miss my family. I like to think of jumping the fence, outrunning the dogs, defying the laws of man or overcoming any other obstacle in my way to get to see them again.

As the album winds down, he switches back to the banjo for We’ll Carry On. The message here is perseverance. There’s been a great tragedy causing a significant setback, but he sings of setting sights again to the future and making the best of a difficult situation.

Which delivers us to the album closer, the powerful I Am Not Feeling Any Pain. He sings of the work being through and toasting the setting sun, taking comfort in the satisfaction of a job well done. I think of this song, and the album as a whole for that matter, as an analogy of life itself. This song sees the singer near the end of his life. He’s looking back and feeling satisfied, feeling that he lived his life honestly and virtuously, feeling that the job he did was done to the best of his ability and done well, feeling no pain of regret or sorrow. Of course it also acts as a perfect bookend to a masterpiece album. Not only does the setting sun imagery complement the rising sun imagery of Bury Your Burdens, it also borrows the same key and similar chord progression. And other than a bass drum and slightly quicker tempo, the fading hum and farm sounds at the end of these two songs are nearly identical. This clever construction of the album as a whole makes me admire it so much more. It absolutely deserves to be heard all at once in one setting.

I get into periods of WEW obsession from time to time, listening to nothing but his albums. I noticed a few days ago when doing some research that his discography includes two demo LPs from prior to Hymns of The Hopeless. I searched for quite a while to locate them for digital download, but came up empty. I did, however, come across a file containing a bundle of “demo” albums I hadn’t seen mentioned anywhere else via free download. They currently reside in my Dropbox public folder and my fellow bloggers should check them out. I haven’t gotten through all of them yet, but there are some awesome unreleased songs and some really good early versions of songs we already know. Why this stuff hasn’t seen the light of day is as baffling to me as why most of the country still doesn’t even know who WEW is.

Two to go. Strong guitar work plays a big role in the success of both. One brings to my mind the 60’s while the other conjures the 80’s, though a diverse range of influences supports both. Both offer 11 tracks of near perfection.