Imagine that you’re 66 years old, and the last of your kids have left for college. You’ve had a successful career as a publisher, including collaborating with music industry veterans from Dee Dee Ramone and Richard Hell to legendary artist Stanley Mouse and historian Dennis McNally. Furthermore, you’ve been a part-time musician all your life, playing with friends and at parties. All those years you kept writing songs, honing the craft. Finally, you decide to really pursue your passion so you record your first album and release it. In March, 2020. That’s the abridged story of Berkeley, California’s Charlie Winton.
Fortunately Charlie kept at it, and with the help of producer and multi-instrumentalist Scott Mathews he just released his second album, The Soul And the Shadow. Winton inhabits a singer-songwriter character throughout the record, singing and playing acoustic guitar, while Mathews handles the rest of the instruments. The immediately identifiable characteristic of Winton’s vocals is a gravely, rough and tumble sound. At first you think of Tom Waits, but as you listen more it dawns on you that it really has more of Springsteen’s passion. It’s most obvious on Wild In the Streets, with a wall of sound in a coming of age song. Burning the Past is anthemic rock at its finest exhorting you to “never give up, never give in!”
In a close musical adjacency are a couple of strong power pop numbers. True To You, about being who you are, would be an instant radio hit, if there still was such a thing. Runaround is a guitar-fueled ode to owning your destiny that leaves you with your fist pumping in the air. A couple of good ballads also make an appearance. Sad Song Singing is a catchy acoustic tune remembering a perhaps-too-impulsive friend lost too soon. The album ends with Autumn Leaves Are Falling, a thinly veiled reference to getting older. With acoustic and steel guitar it has a distinctly country feel until the organ drops in to brighten things up.
Life as a journey, to be cherished and embraced, is a theme throughout the record. The title track lays that out when it talks about “walking the line, between the soul and the shadow.” Charlie Winton has documented that and set it to a Jersey shore soundtrack, complete with a little chip on its shoulder. If you like that kind of rock and roll, and who doesn’t, go get The Soul And the Shadow.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.