Album Notes

JB Nelson & the Chainsaws play old country church blues songs, their own style of circus folk music, as if it were from the torn pages of a honky-tonk scrapbook found stuffed down the side of a couch. JB Nelson himself has written maybe a thousand songs in his time, and so the Chainsaws.. music is just a keyhole into his songbook, but perhaps their music sums up all the lonesome nights and drunken thrills he..s had. Now on a self-imposed exile into his studio, we have seen him become entwined in his guitar and lyric books until now he eats songs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. No time for work or the outside world any more, it interferes with his express-train songcraft. Mother Chainsaw..s melodica is as beautiful and illuminating as silver at the bottom of an empty well, and indispensable in the absence of typical instruments of the standard country sound. She represents the pedal steel guitar, fiddle or harmonica with an instrument she has made her own over the years. She also upholds the philosophy that a Chainsaw needs to work with only the ambition of having had fun. The Black McLean is keeper of the keys, and plays JB Nelson..s cheap battery-operated organ, adding a warmth to their sound while augmenting Mother Chainsaw..s melodies. In switching from guitar to keys he..s found that he can let both his hands wander to find twice as much music. He always hears music, and where his music goes…he..ll follow. It..s a scratchy sound, like times gone by. It..s music carved into the birchwood, not like a re-usable branding iron, or a fraud in Hollywood. The Chainsaws don..t seek perfection. This is more of a spillage than something carefully transferred. Three feral kids, self-trained to make music as they see fit, stuck in another towne in which to lose all their cash.