You get all types of songwriters. Some write sugary pop songs (for sugary pop acts like the Sugababes), some write depressing dirges and some write screenplays that fit into 3 minutes and 29 seconds. Not the screenplay for a Hollywood blockbuster mind you but for an arthouse classic. "Drinking Gin and Sipping Tea" could easily be the screenplay to a Jim Jarmusch movie. Hey, you can even see Tom Waits having a cameo role in it.

Now this a cautionary tale of moral depravity - "… a man who kissed his cousin will surely lie down with a dozen dirty sailors drinking gin and sipping tea" containing some very neatly drawn characters like Woody who is "… as glory bound as any Oklahoma boy" and smells of "… lye soap, cigarettes and gasoline. Now these are the kind of people that you know exist in your more esoteric movies but you hope that you would never meet in real life. A character called Jimmy Pistolero experiences the dangers of playing with guns and he too is drawn into the spiralling depravity. There is something quite refreshing, however, about it all as there is just too much love in your average song (and that might explain where all the love that should be out in the world has gone) and this redresses the balance. Sharply performed with just the right amount of dark humour, this is the kind of song that kicks off theme parties. You might think that it would be a mean spirited song but that dark humour actually gives it warmth.

Available on their album "Small Town Burning" and on the "Mermaid" EP. Also downloadable as an MP3 from CD Baby.
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The world needs storytellers. The world needs the kind of people that tell us about that strange, warped world that we live in. People like Johnny Cash, Lee Hazelwood, Tom Waits or even the subject of this review - Mat D. & the Profane Saints. This 10 track album is what you get when Americana meets up with its twisted cousin up a dark alley and lives to tell the tale.

They take us through a living, breathing set of stories that would make a soap opera proud. "Rambling Mary Jane Walker" introduces to the kind of low life characters that inhabit the shadows of every small town. "Bikini Bull Riding" is dedicated to upholding those important things in life namely bikini bull riding, cold beer and those damn, dirty girls. That song took us back to a time when Bluesbunny thought that was all there was on the road to happiness. Life teaches us more lessons as we go through it and that is also the case with this album. "My Soul to Blame" is a cautionary tale of what happens when a man meets the wrong woman at the wrong time. Jealousy, infidelity and murder - its all there. If you want redemption then take a listen to the gospel flavoured "You Shall be Free". Our favourite was the wryly moral "Drinking Gin and Sipping Tea". You have to hand it to this band. They take us on a walk through the wild side armed only with black humour and musical verve.

All the drama of life and love on one CD and just like a soap opera, once you get started you just get addicted to it. This was indeed the case here and the Bluesbunny immediately broke out the credit card and bought as much of the band's back catalogue as he could find. It is safe to say that we recommend that you do the same starting with this album. 
bluesbunny - www.bluesbunny.com (Aug 7, 2007)

--www.bluesbunny.com
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I remember when Biohazard released their first album, Urban Discipline. Man, that shit hit me like a jab coming right up the pipe. Raw as a freshly popped blister with more grit than a fish fry. You got the feeling that the songs on that album were written from experience and when he sang “you’re on the wrong side of the tracks” it probably wasn’t the first time such an encounter had occurred. While Mat D. and the Profane Saints don’t sound anything like Biohazard they still manage to remind me of that debut cd in every other way.

Mat D and the Profane Saints are like a well worn pair of jeans. Frayed edges, skoal can imprint in the back pocket and too many stains for them to be proper in local eating establishments but you do it anyhow. Mat D writes songs about the underbelly of the American dream. Dive bars, dead lovers, drag queens, and liquor fueled nights. All the while you have his Profane Saints providing a southern fried blues back beat with a little rockabilly and country thrown in for spice. All of this is performed with more familiarity than a Bible College graduate should have. On a personal note, I am glad the devil’s siren, rock and roll, pulled this guy off the path of righteousness and pointed him down the seeder road of lost faith, sexuality, and sin of back roads rural America.
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Most people call it Roots Rock, and the roots are clearly visible in Mat d. and the Profane Saints' first album, "Small Town Burning..."

"Hillbilly haiku" is what one critic labeled Mat d.'s songs.

There's a little Johnny Cash here, some Tom Petty there, more than a touch of Bob Dylan and generous nods to other rock, country, folk and blues influences, such diverse performers as Steve Earle, Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, Tom Waits, Bob Seger, John Hiatt and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

But then Sioux City's Mat d. (AKA Matthew de Riso) puts his own stamp on it, making each a Mat d. song, unique but rooted.

The album's compelling but dark murder song, "My Soul to Blame," owes its life to Cave and Cash and a myriad of country singers who have penned murder ballads over the past 100 years.

"Well you know that I loved her, but I had to kill her. This old heart of mine couldn't take the pain," he sings. "Now she's leaving with Satan on a ghost train to nowhere. And the good lord has no soul but my soul to blame."

While the killer hates the girl who has broken his heart, "at the end it's almost like he's looking to heaven for forgiveness. He's in prison and he's regretting everything that he's done," Mat d. said.

A sad but compelling song, it doesn't exactly glorify the crime.

The album opener, "Rambling Mary Jane Walker," got its name, though not its message, from the Mary Jane candies. "Miss Mary Jane Walker, she's taking notes and sipping wine," he sings. "She's thinking, I've got your money right here, honey, but I don't got the time."

The saints and sinners that populate all of his songs, with names like Lonely Joe Reynolds, Romeo Sanchez, Vagabond Betty and Jimmy Pistolero, are familiar enough to anyone who's ever been in a bar, worked a job or been on a date. Pretty much anybody who's ever lived outside a convent.

The album title came from cut number two, the rollicking "Swivel Town."

"I broke your heart and then I gave it back to you," he sings of two swiveling lovers in a smoldering town full of saints and sinners. "Well you sold your soul, but you only got a buck or two."

"When I'm saying 'small town burning,' I'm kind of referring to the human heart, someone who's burning with romance. So it's more romantic, probably a sexually charged theme. And I think it fit," Mat d. said.

He went through a number of titles, trying to figure out what to call the album, at one time figuring any of the CD's five strongest tracks might work; but he couldn't get away from the image of that small town burning. That hunka burning love Elvis used to sing about.

"Carolina Home Wreckers Blues" is a look at that age-old theme of adultery, presenting a man who is looking for his wife's lover at a bar, revenge on his mind.

"Drinking Gin and Sipping Tea" is an irreverent sailor ballad about Woody Guthrie, CIsco Houston and Jim Longhi while they were in the Merchant Marines during World War II.

"Sweet Louise" is a sad, tender look at Hurricane Katrina and devastated New Orleans.

In a whole different direction is "Bikini Bull Riding," a jaunty ballad that was inspired by a sign Mat d. saw in Las Vegas while on his honeymoon: "Bikini Bull Riding, Cold Beer and Dirty Girls."

It's not a sign anybody could just make up.

"I mean how much more obvious does that get," he said. "Where else in the world are you going to see something like this?"

There is a hint of the old minister-to-be as he sings about "those damned dirty girls" with their bouffant hairstyles, thick makeup and discount lipstick. Not that the girls get all the blame, what with the good old boys not seeming to mind that these girls happen to be someone else's sisters and daughters.

Most of his songs come from what Mat d. sees in the environment, especially fringe Americana elements like the carnival sideshow, and his own life experiences, such as broken relationships.

One song, "The Full Gospel Motel," came to him one day when he drove past the Gospel Mission on his way home from work. "And it's nothing against the Gospel Mission. I'm not trying to be filthy or dirty or anything like that," he said. "But you know, just to kind of write a sleazy love song. You've got the people that are down and out. They need loving, too."

His songs could come from from anywhere. But like many a country song, he sticks to the age-old themes -- life, death, love, sex, God and the Devil.
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