T Model Ford
You Better Keep Still (Fat Possum)
by Jon Sarre
They say it took this man seventy-five years to release his debut record. Obviously, at the age of seventy-seven he doesn’t want to make a lousy follow up, I mean, ya gotta start worryin’ ’bout mortality, never mind the fickle tendencies of yer record company. Happily though, there’s no sophomore slump for T Model Ford, one of the rawest, ass-whompin’est blues talents to stalk outta nowhere since people knew what the fuck “antediluvian” meant.
The untold tens of people who enthusiastically snapped up copies of Ford’s first album, Pee-Wee Get My Gun, are not gonna be disappointed by this new one. Sure, You Better Keep Still isn’t quite the dark ride through Faulkner’s nightmare insanity and violence that was Pee-Wee, but it doesn’t take much to imagine Ford picking a head-cuttin’ contest with B.B. King and clubbin’ the ol’ gent (and Lucille) over the head with his battered guitar the moment it becomes apparent that all is lost (like the way Jesse “The Body” Ventura useta operate, and look where he is today).
Ford’s (usually accompanied by his drummer, Tommy Lee “Spam” Miles) approach to songwriting is pretty straightforward: he drives a wobbly repetitive riff into the ground. Over that, his gravelly voice either repeats a few sentences over and over (as on “Look What All You Got”) or rambles off on a story (see “We Don’t Understand”). There’s lotsa room to wander in his songs and he takes his liberties there. Spam’s snare beats often serve to shepherd him back to the vicinity, but then Ford’s treble-heavy distorted licks sorta roam off again.
Even when some discipline is instilled, such as in the very martial “To The Left To the Right” (where Ford barks the title sound-off style like he was Master-Sergeant of the Blues or somethin’), jagged, out-of-tune guitar riffage hangs out of step. This record’s guitarless first track, “If I Had Wings (Part 1),” by contrast, is an impressively honed piece where T. Model sorta recites what sounds like a hydration-deprived anxiety dream (and occasionally yodels) while pounding out a loping beat on what sounds like a wet cardboard box. On the more unhinged side of things is “Here Comes Papa,” a gleefully menacing number where Ford’s huge shadow looms like Papa got a brand new bag and he’s gonna suffocate you with it.
You Better Keep Still‘s one real failure (even the sorta annoying “These Eyes,” where Ford ad libs a bizarre courtship ritual in the form of a monologue, has its moments) is the Jim Waters-remixed “Pop Pop Pop.” Much in the style of R.L. Burnside’s crapshoot-for-Atari-Teenage-Riot’s-audience, Come On In, the Waterworks guy throws a buncha pops and squeals and empty piano rolls in the blender with some of Ford’s mumbles and bastes in a dance beat. It doesn’t work, especially where it is, in the middle of the goddamned record! Let the Man do his thing and save the remixes for the Becks and G. Loves. Some people oughtta just take their Blues straight.
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