Shawn Mullins: Southern Storyteller

honeydew
Shawn Mullins
(Vanguard)

On his 1998 hit, “Lullaby,” Shawn Mullins assured a sad SoCal girl, in his soaring falsetto, that “everything is gonna be all right.” Ten years later, at 40, Mullins doesn’t sound nearly as sure of the outcome.

“I’m just trying to get by,” the Georgian singer-songwriter admits at the outset of his new disc, “honeydew.” That first line, from the opener, “All in My Head,” sets the tone for the rest of the album. The song’s theme of self-examination is revisited over and over, through well-developed characters and through Mullins himself.

Of course, the problem could just be him. “Is it all in my head? / Is it all in my head? / Could everything be all right, without me knowin’?” Mullins asks. He’s really just playing devil’s advocate with that chorus, and he spends the next 11 tracks laying out some of the things that are amiss in the world around him.

His environment might have changed, but one thing has not: Mullins still has his melodic sensibilities intact. The album, though varied in its acoustic and electric sounds as well as its arrangements, is rooted in ear-pleasing folk-rock. And the “na na na na na na na” backup vocals could take Mullins and “All in My Head” back to the upper reaches of the Top 40 if this were still an era when singer-songwriters had radio hits. The lead guitar work, provided by Peter Stroud (Sheryl Crow) on this track (and throughout the album), is consistently engaging and adds to the overall sound of “honeydew.”

He’s been relatively under the radar since briefly taking over the radio and TV airwaves a decade ago, which might lead some to brand Mullins a has-been. But he has only grown as a writer in the interim. In 2006, Mullins’ album “9th Ward Pickin’ Parlor” established him as accomplished Americana artist and produced a minor hit in “Beautiful Wreck.” He’s honed his craft further in the ensuing two years, writing an album rooted in the red clay of his home state. He’s observed the South on the road, in his personal and familial relationships and in news clippings. From this source material, he has populated “honeydew” with wanderers, soldiers, scared old women, homeless guitar players, and young people looking for a way out of their bleak existence.

“Honeydew” contains its share of characters in sad or dire situations. “Harry” from “Fraction of a Man” could have been one of the barflies in Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” He had his heart broken by the only woman he ever loved (other than his mother), and seems resigned to life as a confirmed bachelor and, quite possibly, an alcoholic. The old woman at the heart of “The Ballad of Kathryn Johnston” watches her once-peaceful neighborhood deteriorate until it tragically consumes her. The young woman in “Leaving All Your Troubles Behind” isn’t ready to accept her fate without attempting to negotiate the terms; she’s fleeing her dead-end existence before it’s too late.

Picking up where he left off on “All in My Head,” Mullins asks more questions, in a broader sense, on the mandolin-accented “For America.” He starts with an allusion to Jack Keroac, “living on bennies and apple pie / cigarettes and whiskey and a wide-open sky” in his classic “On the Road.” Mullins quickly shifts to a young sergeant in the National Guard who risks his life, and loses a limb, serving the U.S. in the Middle East. Mullins, who served in the Army before pursuing music full-time, doesn’t preach. He simply asks what kind of country will welcome these veterans home, and wonders aloud, “What was the plan for America?”

The sense of loss is more personal in “Rewind the Years.” Mullins stated in pre-release press materials that the song was written about his and his father’s struggles since his mother’s death in 2006. Knowing that going in definitely attaches meaning to the song, but the loss described in Mullins’ lyrics is universal. “I fight back my tears / try to rewind the years / And that’s all I can do, now that you’re gone” is bound to remind listeners of someone they knew, or loved, who has passed through their life or through this world.

The themes on “honeydew” aren’t all as weighty as those on “For America” and “Rewind the Years.” “Homeless Joe” celebrates a street musician who doesn’t have “no compact disc, no music video,” but has something much harder to find in the age of American Idolatry: good, honest music made for music’s sake. The track has a wonderfully soulful feel. Perhaps it’s the subject matter, but it conjures an image of raggedy men in fingerless gloves singing around a flaming trash barrel. Followers of Lyle Lovett and his Large Band also will be pleased to discover that Francine Reed shares the spotlight with a terrific vocal counterpoint on the track and other fine backup vocals on "honeydew."

The supporting voices and instruments are used to great effect on “honeydew.” “See That Train,” in which a man moans over being left by his woman, builds locomotion through the layering of whistles, hand-clap percussion and a chain-gang of backup singers whose chants of “HOOM … hah” drive the song, and the woman’s train, further down the line, “all the way to Birmingham.” The slide guitar sounds like an homage to one of Georgia’s favorite sons: Duane Allman.

The inclusion of a train song seems appropriate. The cover photo of “honeydew” depicts Mullins from the shoulders down, guitar slung over his shoulder, walking near train tracks like a modern Pete Seeger or Bob Dylan during his folkie years. Mullins says in “Home” that “hobos, tramps and troubadours / don’t ride in boxcars like they did before,” and you get the feeling that he longs to walk in their shoes. In a sense, as an observer of life and a singer of songs, he does. Mullins has traveled many miles since breaking through in the last days before MTV morphed from music television to reality television. He may not have had a long run as a video star, but “honeydew” indicates Mullins has plenty of good years ahead in the troubadour game.