Finer Thing

Mulehead | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 19, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Max Recordings
• ASIN: B000667GAA
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #450,024 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

About the Artist

In my dusty archive crash course on Little Rock’s underbelly, I learned there were (and still are) vibrant, smart scenes in theater, art, music, etc., although they didn’t seem to get their due. With the 1980s examples of the major-signed Gunbunnies, Spectrum Weekly, the S.O.B. club and the elections of Bill Clinton, there was a feeling Little Rock might become known as a groove center like an Athens or Austin. Sneer if you will, but at times, the Hillcrest/downtown/Capitol View nexus has been as good or better. You just had to know where to go.

Side project Mulehead came to the fore. The snide twangy rock was a zag from his previous group Ho-hum. And Kerby enlisted some of Little Rock's best players (Drummer GEOFF CURRAN, who also handled the brunt of the work recording this album; remarkable bassist/vocalist/ordained minister BRENT LABEAU and guitarist DAVE RAYMOND (vocal on "My House"), who have all been together since last century. And that's Little Rock native Virginia Ralph singing on "Crows."). Further, the band seemed to emerge at a time when 'alt.country' was emerging, too. Sneer again, man, but there's nothing wrong with a niche, or good timing.

Even with an insane amount of cool groups around, Mulehead seemed like the face for Little Rock rock. One local newspaperman called Mulehead "Eddie Haskell goes to seminary school." Cute, huh? But the band preferred to highlight the accolades from publications like No Depression and open for Willie Nelson. With these guys opening doors, the scene again was ripe for exploitation. But, again, it was an exploitation which never fully materialized.

And now they tell me this is Mulehead’s last album. "Frankie Lee" does seem a toast to loss. But dig the honky tonk of "Sober Weekend" and "Eventually", the rock of "Stubborn Blood", the memorable "All Fall Down". "There Are Nights" channels Gunbunnies and the Call. A former Vino’s waitress turned mom told me there’s always a Mulehead song that makes her cry: "Crows on a Wire" this time? "Favorite Song"? Meanwhile, the surf/Willie/Zeppelin stew of "Deep Water" points to a tantalizing direction. Why trade her in when there’s so few miles on her?

But do not grieve for Mulehead. It has been a testament for doing the thing for its own sake, not glory and fame. And there will be others. Lots of others. Doing the thing for its own reward abounds here.

"A lot of people leave Arkansas, and most of them come back sooner or later," said Little Rock newspaperman Ray Midge, the hero -- of sorts -- in Charles Portis’s novel Dog of the South. "They can’t quite achieve escape velocity."

And here I’ve been, ruminating myself, while pulling weeds all evening as the sun sets, the state capitol dome orange in reflection. If you’re gardening, escape velocity is way down the list.

That damned Kerby is zagging at just the right time again. I’ll be out on the porch.

-- S. Koch July 2004, Little Rock

Product Description

The sixteen songs wonderfully captured on MULEHEAD’s final album show a band not at last gasp but at a strident, fully realized moment in time. From the understated organic beauty of "Hammers" and "Crows Up On A Wire" to the raucous deliverance felt in "Stubborn Blood", MULEHEAD display a remarkable ability to craft truly great tunes in the rock and roll / country genre mash up. Sequestered in drummer Geoff Curran’s attic studio, the band set about the task of documenting what would be the final recorded chapter of the band’s career.