ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Issue #884/885, June 30, 2006


Johnny Dowd
Cruel Words
(Bongo Beat)
Roots-Rock

Drawn to the shadows? Then you might run into Dowd — an out-of-the-dime-store-novel character who started making albums eight years ago, at 50. Here Dowd continues crafting extraordinary Beefheartian gothic-rock tales of the disenfranchised. There’s plenty of his discomforting growl and dark wit (“Momma snorting coke and eating a Moon pie”). But on his sixth disc — his most tuneful and accessible — there are raucous sing-alongs too, including one with the Mekons’ Sally Timms and Jon Langford (“Drunk”). It’s an outsider-art show come to life. B+

-- Beth Johnson



PASTE MAGAZINE
August 2006

JOHNNY DOWD ****
Cruel Words (Bongo Beat)

Seedy poet draws near-masterpiece

Johnny Dowd spouts his half-spoken, half-sung gutter poetry in an Okie drawl and declaims about suicide, vengeance, Moonpies, cocaine, Bible radio, sex and wheelchairs. Every character in Cruel Words’ songs is damaged; some physically, all mentally, and he writes of “Barbed wire women” and failed musicians who scrawl their farewell messages in lipstick on the mirror and who lean their Stratocasters against the wall “like a cripple’s crutch.” Johnny also plays guitar, and he’s never met a Black Sabbath riff he didn’t like. The keyboardist plays greasy Hammond B3 organ like Jimmy Smith, and has aspirations to join a prog-rock band. It’s a hopelessly uncommercial venture. It’s also great, wildly creative, uncompromising music.

Andy Whitman



MOJO

Johnny Dowd
Cruel Words
Bongo Beat (four stars)

Kim's back, Jon Langford and Sally Timms guest, and Dowd raps and plays Iron Man

The sparse, solo blues of Dowd's 1988 debut has long since given way to a distinctive band sound that's as much jazz as roots music, as much poetry as rock. From opening number House Of Pain, with its retro keyboards, screaming noir chords, big drums and spoken-word lyrics about rearranged brains and "that thing between his legs", this is classic Dowd territory: perverse and musically delirious, perverted and blackly funny. Fans will welcome the return of Kim Sherwood-Caso - Johnny's June - after her absence on 2004's *Cemetery Shoes*. Two Mekons also add backing vocals to country ballad Drunk. Elsewhere there's blues rock, wheelchair boogie (anti-war song Praise God), even rap and heavy metal (Poverty House and a reworked Johnny B.Goode featuring a Black Sabbath riff). But Dowd still sounds like Ed Gein wearing the skin of Allen Ginsberg, Tom Waits, and Jeffrey Lee Pierce.

Sylvie Simmons


LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS

JOHNNY DOWD: "Cruel Words"
(Bongo Beat) ***

Dowd started writing and recording songs of depression and depravity in midlife, apparently while enjoying some material success as the owner of a moving company. You wouldn't think the man ever had any luck at all from the musical evidence on this crisply produced amalgam of gut-punched blues, hard-times rock, trailer-park eviction Americana and even some jazz/funk/electronica for those who somehow, perversely, may wish to dance. I don't know where Dowd came up with his anxiously growled, traumatic tales of self-mutilating cowboys, stumbling 12-steppers, veterans whose anger takes no prisoners and guys that really should never be allowed within 50 feet of unsuspecting women. I don't want to know, either. But these are some very well-told stories, for those with the fortitude to listen.


ITHACA JOURNAL

Johnny Dowd releases latest CD at Chapter House

Local icon Johnny Dowd adds to his impressive discography this week with the U.S. release of his latest album, “Cruel Words."

Released in Europe in February 2006, “Cruel Words” has already garnered a host of praise from various British publications, including Mojo (4 Stars, “as much jazz as roots music, as much poetry as rock”); Maverick (5 Stars, “Johnny Dowd is a law unto himself”); Classic Rock (8 stars, “the songs are quirky but they rock”); Time Out London (5 Stars, “gothic folk funk”); Daily Mirror (4 Stars, “wit and wisdom to match even the late great Warren Zevon”); and The Independent (5 Stars, “may be the greatest album of his career”).

An Entertainment Weekly review this week gave the album a B+, noting that it was Dowd's “most tuneful and accessible” album and calling it an “outsider art show come to life.”

One reason that the new album is so compelling is that all the songs were heavily road tested.
“We were mostly looking to reproduce the songs the way we do them live,” says Dowd, taking a break from a practice session at the Shop in Willseyville. We played all the songs for at least a year on tour, then went in and played them a couple of times. Maybe we overdubbed an part here and there, and we did the vocals separately, but it's mainly what we do live.”

Adds Brian “Willie B” Wilson, Dowd's longtime drummer and bass pedalist, “It almost didn't feel like a recording session, more like just one or two days of playing these tunes. I think that comes across on the CD.”

Michael Stark , who joined the band three years ago, also plays a prominent role on the record.

“For a lot of the album we were going for a pretty aggressive organ sound, looking back at Deep Purple stuff, trying to capture electric guitar parts on the organ,” says Stark. “It was the perfect opportunity to get deep into that B-3 organ that I have, which was once owned by Deep Purple. I got to try all of the modifications—I hadn't really had an outlet for them before—and I made it a point on every tune to do something slightly different and really push what that organ can do.”

The CD also marks the return of singer Kim Sherwood-Caso, who was a band member for years, but no longer tours with Dowd.

“A lot of the songs are stuff I've done forever,” she says. “They've been rearranged but the vocal parts are mainly the same. I've learned vocals playing with Johnny originally, so our things is sort of innate at this point, for me. I know what he's going for melodically. He usually has all the phrasing down, and I just pick up the melody.”

Dowd has long been known for changing his band's instrumentation, but the current lineup has been solid for the past three years.

“I've played with a lot of different setups, but this has always been my ideal setup with the organ trio, which I never really had,” Dowd says. “The one kind of music I've always liked and we can all sort of relate around is organ trio blues and jazz. We're not playing Jimmy Smith-type tunes. But the sound of the band are those sounds. I think I could play with this trio until I drop and not exhaust the possibilities. We can go in any direction—these guys can play anything I come up with. I can't see that it would ever get boring as long as the people get along.”

Adds Wilson: “With the lineup, we try this feel or that feel. But when it comes back to it, we can always rock out. To hear unconventional instruments in a rock settting like organ—usually organ trios are jazz or funk, but then you put it in a heavy metal context.

“I heard a version of ‘Green Onions' on a live Stax album, where the organ is way overdriven and it sounds unbelievably rock and roll.”

“If I had to say what's my favorite song of all time, that would be it,” agrees Dowd. “Everything I would want to do would be in some sense a mutated version of ‘Green Onions.' It's got that sound and that groove.”

Both Stark and Wilson have played and recorded with lots of other local bands, but they continue to make time in their schedule to play with Dowd.

“The thing I like most like playing with John, besides the great hairdo, is that he pretty much let me play what I want,” says Wilson. “He looks to have the band do a certain thing that's in his mind, but he wants to hear your ideas, which you don't always get in band with strong personalities like these. And he's found a way to make it part of his sound. It's an unusual thing—to describe something and have a band do it, and say ‘that's what I was talking about.' Or, ‘that has nothing do with what I was describing, but I like it' and will incorporate into a song.”

To mark the release of the new CD, Dowd and company will play a show Saturday night at the Chapter House. There's a cover for the 10 p.m. show. Call 277-9782 or visit www.johnnydowd.com for more information.

The band will soon hit the road for a cross-country tour that will take them to Vancouver and back. And Hellwood, a joint project between Dowd and Jim White, with whom he-costarred in “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus,” will release an album in Europe in the fall that will be followed by an October European tour.

While Dowd hasn't ever raked in the big bucks, he's grateful for what he's been able to accomplish in the music world since his solo debut CD “Wrong Side of Memphis” came out in 1998.

“I complain all the time, but I'm actually very impressed with the opportunity to do what I've done and have gotten as much credit as I have,” he says. “Most of the time the money sucks, but on the other hand, it is money, and sometimes it's decent. The last European tour was pretty decent.”

Notes Wilson: “Johnny doesn't sell a lot of records, but he's been able to keep doing what we've been doing and do tours. A lot of it is just the belief in the thing. A lot of bands that have been around for years, like the Mekons and Pere Ubu, everybody who is in the band or has worked with the band—they all believe in the same idea, which I think helps the organizations to be able to do these tours beyond the money thing.”

Dowd credits his wife, Kat Dalton, for her managerial acument. “So even though it's not a super big thing, the people in the band know what they're getting paid, and it's reliable,” he says. “That's what kept us going, and that's what I owe the band is organization, and that's what Kat provides.”