Dusty Wright dusts off his favorite songs

By Henry Lipput

On Dusted Off, Dusty Wright’s fine new covers album, he has recorded some of his favorite songs as well as the ones he enjoys playing live.

Wright has chosen songs from the 1950’s to the 1970’s and in doing so he has reimagined them and made them his own. The two best examples of this are his covers of “Walk On The Wild Side” and “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone.”

On “Walk On The Wild Side” Wright turns Lou Reed’s glorified take of New York City’s Lower East Side of the early 1970s into a sad, melancholic look at the sex and drugs that permeated that time.

With “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” Wright’s version of The Monkees song (written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart who wrote many of the band’s other hits) a response to a lover’s taking advantage becomes a mid-60s psychedelic journey. Wright has mentioned that his version is influenced by the Paul Revere and The Raiders cover but what we hear on Dusted Off is a whole different animal.

“That’s All Right” is neither a recreation of Elvis Presley’s Sun Sessions version or Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s original but instead the sound looks away from a rave up but to Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Stephen Still’s coming-of-age song “4+20,” like the CSNY Déjà Vu track, has acoustic guitar but Wright adds textured electric guitars that conjure up a hazy, long-ago vibe.

“The Mighty Quinn” and “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” show Wright’s obvious debt to the songwriting of Bob Dylan. Wright loves these songs and you can hear it in his voice. For the digital bonus track “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” Wright recorded a slowed down yet faithful version of the original with a Dylanesque harmonica topping it off. And by slowing down the song he doesn’t try to match the avalanche of words from Dylan’s vocal but makes them understood.

It’s not always lonely in Lonelyville

 By Henry Lipput

Dusty Wright pulled a fast one on us.

Before he announced his latest album, he released three singles: two would become album tracks including “Stare into the Sun” which he described as “an homage to carefree days playing underneath the canopy of the sun” and a non-album track was a cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “Sit Down I Think I Love You.”

Of the album itself, Lonelyville (Pet Rock), Wright’s concept of isolation became the underlying narrative. There are of course examples of this in the title song in which following a routine takes the place of having a relationship (“I find peace in simple things/Repeating the same small things/My routine keeps me sharp/Melting away my pain … and loss”). The situation in “Making New Friends” is even more grim: “I’m playing with mud again/Watch me build my new friends.

But don't let the album’s title and the stated concept put you off because many songs on Lonelyville are about love in its many forms. It’s also a dramatic departure from Wright’s 2020 album Can Anyone Hear Me? which was full of protest songs about what we’re doing to the planet and each other.

One of my favorite songs on Lonelyville is “Unbearable Brightness” which asks the musical question: How bright does your love shine when it's not returned? (“But I don’t know what to say/I don’t know what to do/But I know you know/Just how you make me …  feel.”) It’s a situation many of us have been in and it’s a glorious feeling until we’re eventually shut down.

Despite these disappointments, the message of “To Find Love” is you have to share love to find love: “You have to love in spite of it all/You have to stand up after you fall/You have to give in to it all/You have to love to find love.”

Love can also be scary when it seems we’re in too deep too quickly. This is the situation in “Riptide of Love”: “Swimming to the surface/Trying to catch our breath/But I’m not certain/If we’re got our best/Caught in a riptide of love/Don’t know if we’re under or above.”

So how do you get out of Lonelyville? As four wise men once sang, all you need it love. Love is the exit ramp from Lonelyville and it's shouted loud and clear on the closing track, "Leaving Lonelyville," like a conductor calling for the final boarding of a train.

Take the time to hear what Dusty Wright has to say

 By Henry Lipput

You would have been mistaken if you thought the title song on Dusty Wright’s 2018 album Gliding Towards Oblivion would be about the affects that humanity was having on our planet and where we‘re headed if nothing is done. But it really wasn’t. However, with his cover of Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising” last year it became abundantly clear where his concerns lie as the song was presented as a tribute to those fighting climate change.

On his serious and extremely tuneful new album, Can Anyone Hear Me? (Pet Rock/Bandcamp), Wright goes all in on writing protest songs about (among other things) climate change, gun violence, and child abuse. (“Awareness“ songs might be a better way to describe them because what he’s protesting is our lack of awareness and action on these issues.) 

Because some of the songs, like the opening track “Rain Rain” (a hopeful song despite having been written on a rainy, dreary day in March during a NYC lockdown) are not obviously part of the protest genre, I’m reminded of what Dylan said to the Royal Albert Hall audience during his 1966 tour of England: “They’re all protest songs.” 

Wright, in a voice that recalls the late, great Harry Chapin, plays acoustic and electric guitars, eBow, mellotron, harmonica, and percussion on the new album. He is joined by singers and musicians who are very much in tune with him and his words.  They give Can Anyone Hear Me? an early Americana vibe not unlike post-motorcycle crash Dylan albums like John Wesley Harding.

One of the most striking songs on Can Anyone Hear Me? is “Book Of Tears” a song Wright has said came about after the horrific mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. He seems to be asking: If there’s a Book Of Love, why shouldn’t there be a Book Of Tears? “I found this book/With so many names/The pages were all filled with pain/Who has read/The Book Of Tears?”

“It Makes No Sense” is also about gun violence, especially as it concerns the young victims and it’s also about the hunger children face in the richest country in the world. On “Broken Birds” Wright sings of “fractured wings” and “shattered dreams” as he addresses child abuse and the terrible harm it does to a child’s future. He hopes they can find the strength to hold on to their dreams and try to fly.

The full band “Can Anyone Hear Me?,” with its Byrds-like jangle, is a plea for recognition for those who are ignored or feared because of their economic status, color, or what country they‘re arrived from. “You can buy more guns/And build more walls/But the hate in your heart/Will be the end of us all.”

Far be it from me to tell someone how to put together a track listing, but the joyful, hopeful, rocking “New Year Bliss” should have been the last song on Can Anyone Hear Me? Written and recorded when things in this country looked especially bleak and now (with a vaccine and a new resident in the White House) it looks like what was once a dream is now a reality. With birds singing and applause at the end, it’s a wonderful wish for a new beginning.

Next time: There are no fools like the New Fools.