One of the popular plot lines in a number of current TV shows is about someone with a regular life who, it turns out, was trained as an assassin/spy/renegade. Then their memory was wiped so they could live a normal life until some trigger brings back the badass. There’s some parallel to that in musician Trever M. Keith, a resident of southern California for decades but now living in Nashville. As the front man for Face to Face, he became an iconic punk rocker (OK, maybe not a “normal” life). His imprint, though, was the country music surrounding him as a child. That alter ego has now surfaced and he’s about to release an old-school country music album, We Drank From a Poisoned Well.
The title track is a lazy country shuffle with the pedal steel part flowing through it like water. It’s about a relationship that’s become one-sided, but could just as easily be a commentary about America’s social divisiveness despite how much we have in common. Wretched Bones is a classic country waltz. The searing pedal steel and electric guitar parts underscore the notion that always putting others needs first carries a high price in the loss of one’s own needs and dreams. Don’t Say My Name is a Texas swing number with a nice walking bass line. The singer realizes the relationship is over, time to move on, so tells the ex to “pretend I don’t exist.”
One of the things that surprised me most was the range and warmth of Keith’s vocals. Those characteristics aren’t generally highlighted in the punk genre, but you don’t suddenly develop them after 30 years of singing so they, too, have been there all along. Heartbreak Grin really introduces you to Trever’s baritone-to-tenor breadth. Said smile is really a facade over the pain where “no one ever wins, still you and I pretend.” Right As Rain is a treatise on codependence, first released on a Face to Face record and now done up in a 60’s country music style. Brackish Waters is a Marty Robbins-style story with a big ol’ acoustic guitar sound where the hero dies at the end, except it turns out he deserved it. There’s probably some inspiration in it from Keith’s dad, who was the film editor on a Marty Robbins western movie, The Ballad of a Gunfighter.
When Trever M. Keith decided to exercise his country music muscle, it would have been an obvious choice to do a cowpunk album. But the punk ethos isn’t about compromise, and frankly, neither is the twangy honky tonk sound of the 60’s and 70’s. More than one musician has noted that both genres came out of similar, hard-scrabble lifestyles, one rural one urban, where hope frequently lays dormant. So maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise at just how badass a country music singer-songwriter Keith is. You can hear for yourself on We Drank From a Poisoned Well.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.