John Minton, “Going back to Vicksburg” (Southern Can, 2004). Rating: 8 out of 10. John Minton’s second album, following on from 2003’s excellent “Life and Times”, finds him stretching out a bit. He’s acquired the superbly named Possum Trot Orchestra to play with him, and The Flying Suraci to sing, and the production is a little more sophisticated sounding. As you might expect from the title though, his work is still shot through with a distinctively Southern sensibility, and at its core remains back porch acoustic folk, with a slight gothic edge. In fact, whisper it quietly, while each of the thirteen songs stands in their own right, taken as a whole it’s almost a concept album, evoking as it does the South of half a century and more ago. Minton’s voice is light and high and well to the fore in the mix, which enables the listener to easily appreciate the lyrical mastery he displays. Some of his characters are Waitsian, like “Wild Ox Moan”’s “girl with a golden tooth” who “ain’t looking for no answers boys/ she ain’t asking for no truth/just trading on the wreckage of her youth”. Elsewhere, his vignettes are almost haiku-like in their ability to capture a whole story with astonishingly economy, as with the wasteland of regret and resignation in “Midnight on the Water”’s opening lines - “She said she was leaving but didn’t say why/She packed the car but dispensed with goodbye”. The playing is uniformly excellent too, particularly Minton’s accordion (notably on the coda to the aforementioned “Midnight”), and Charlie Gilbert’s banjo. This is an album that rewards repeated listening, as there’s something new to catch every time. The overall sound is gentle and easy, but it’s rare to hear it achieved with the effortless style that Minton displays here, and the sound is counter-pointed by the sharp as a blade lyrics. Second albums are so often a falling-off from debuts, but John Minton stomps all over that truism, and in “Going back to Vicksburg” delivers a better work and a classy slice of Southern folk. Highly recommended.

John Minton, a name heretofore unknown to me, turns out to be -- as I learn from a Google search -- a professor of folklore at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. One doesn't have to be an academic, of course, to know a whole lot about traditional American music, and the impulse to apply one's own creative imagination to found musical materials is, well, an American (and not just American) tradition in itself. When I first picked up this CD, though, I was a bit startled to see "Words & Music by John Minton" applied to titles such as "Midnight on the Water," "The Wild Ox Moan," "Poor Boy," "The Hell Bound Train" and others. These titles ordinarily are connected to songs that, handed down over the decades, did not exactly require Minton's assistance in entering the world. Minton, however, has simply taken the titles, and sometimes snatches of lyrics and melodies, and written his own songs, backed by Charlie Gilbert (banjo), Dave Kartholl (mandolin and bowed bass) and Rob Suraci and Susie Suraci (vocals and percussion). Multi-instrumentalist Minton plays guitars, bass, accordion, lap steel, organ, drums and percussion. He sings in a voice that, depending on how you hear it, is either spooky or merely whispery. It is certainly sweeter than one expects to hear from a rooted modern folksinger. Actually, it wouldn't be out of place in '70s California country-rock bands (and their modern-day Americana equivalents such as Railroad Earth), and that is a sound I have always found easy to resist. Still, two or three listenings into Going Back to Vicksburg, I fell under its spell. The album is tastefully put together, with attractive arrangements and literate narrative songs that suggest how traditional Southern ballads might sound in an alternative universe -- a nearer alternative universe than the one that, say, the Handsome Family occupies, though surely pretty much the same one where Grey DeLisle resides down the street. A lyric sheet would have helped, however. Minton takes his time weaving his tales, and his soft voice will have the listener sometimes leaning toward the stereo speakers and straining to hear. It will be, on the other hand, worth the effort.