Jon Rauhouse
Jon Rauhouse's Steel Guitar Air Show
Bloodshot Records
by William Michael Smith
 Jon
Rauhouse sat on his Tucson, Arizona patio scanning the desert
night sky with his telescope. Condensation wiggled haphazardly
down a huge pitcher of martinis kept close at hand so his glass
is never entirely empty of cosmic inspiration. Suddenly, after
years of fruitless searching, a site appears in his telescope
that causes him to drop his Waterford martini glass on the Colorado
flagstone. Incredulous, Rauhouse twists the lens, fine tuning,
seeking a better focus. His heart pounds.
Voila! There it is!
Rauhouse grabs his cellphone and calls Bloodshot Records HQ.
An underpaid hungover minion of the record industry answers.
Out of breath, Rauhouse gasps into the telephone, "Alert
the boss! It's coming right at us and we can't ignore it! The
Steel Guitar Black Hole. I've found it, I tell you! Alert the
powers that be and get back to me later; I've got to hang up
now and study it closer."
Rauhouse leaps over his chaise lounge and grabs a notebook.
Peering through the lens, always fine tuning, Rauhouse begins
to distinguish the remnants of burnt out stars and pulverized
galaxies.
"Holy Mother of the Blessed Mama Mia," he gasps.
"It's the Roy Smeck constellation."
Rauhouse scribbles furiously.
The entire Lloyd Green galaxy, which disappeared over Nashville,
Tennessee 20 years ago, rotates aimlessly. In his search for
the exact center of the heavenly evil, Rauhouse swings the telescope
in ever tighter concentric circles.
"Un-friggin-believable! The Speedy West Flamboyant Nebula."
Visions of impossible minor chords and complicated lead runs
flash through his head as a shower of meteors being sucked in
from deep space flashes through the lens. Rauhouse catches glimpses
of Pete Drake and Jimmie Day and Leon MacAuliffe, Little Roy
Wiggins, Shot Jackson, Ralph Mooney, Walter Haynes, and Cecil
Campbell being swallowed in the blackhole's swirling, growing
sea of expanding indifference. The great Hawaiian steel master
Sol Hoopii flies across the viewer, a fiery shooting star being
pulled into the blackhole's gravitational vortex.
Rauhouse takes his eye from the lens and wipes away a tear.
His hand shaking, he swirls the liquid in the martini pitcher,
pours a glass, and collapses on the chaise lounge.
Dawn approaches. Looking dazed, Rauhouse trudges toward his
studio. Phone calls are made. The great alt.Arizona band Calexico
arrives aboard a beat up yellow school bus with tie-dyed curtains.
Neko Case, Sally Timms, and Kelly Hogan arrive out of the desert
on camels, their faces shrouded by seven veils to conceal their
identities. Bankers are called. Couriers come and go. Deals are
done. Drinks are mixed. Ganja is hand rolled. Much electricity
is consumed.
Emerging from his studio three days later, Rauhouse looks
haggard and roadworn, a monster hangover and lack of sleep making
his every step a bruising collision with the atmosphere. In his
hand he grips a CD freshly burned. It glows like Kryponite.
He plans to sleep for as long as he can. When he awakens,
he will unleash The Steel Guitar Air Show in all its unmerciful
fury. The universe lumbers on, unsuspecting, rotating into and
out of oblivion. The martini pitcher has run dry.
*.........................
*......................... *
Sideman extraordinaire Jon Rauhouse doesn't venture out on
his own much, preferring to sit alongside vocalists like Neko
Case or Kelly Hogan or to throw down with the kings of alt.Arizona,
Calexico. The kickass punks-playing-at-honkytonk Waco Brothers
make a place for Rauhouse when they record or when he's available
to play live.
On Jon Rauhouse's Steel Guitar Air Show, he not only
pays glowing, reverent tributes to the stylistic masters of his
impossibly difficult instrument, he both breathes fresh life
into classics that have long been consigned to oldies radio as
fodder for the braindead and offers new tunes to honor the tradition
and extend it.
Rauhouse takes classics of the genre like "Choo Choo
Ch' Boogie," "The Lonely Bull," "Perfida,"
and the jazz classic "Glow Worm" and showers them in
magic dust. Far from being some Purists Preservation Society
effort, Rauhouse and the Calexico boys bring alt.country spirit
, indie muscle, and a surprising level of excitement to what
at first sounds like it could be a very stodgy venture. There
is no laying back, no candyass homogenization pandering to some
amorphous "wider audience." Rauhouse delivers this
stuff with so much verve and vitality one could get the idea
he'd do these songs even if he wasn't going to make a dime for
his effort; he'd do it because the melodies are pleasing and
smart, because the progressions are heady and vigorous, and because
anyone with half an ear can understand that this stuff by-god
matters.
Rauhouse is all about quality tone and he gets plenty of it,
varying his approach and sound track to track. His Hawaiian playing
is as faultless as his jazzy jumping western swing. But for my
money, where Rauhouse really shines is when he turns on the reverb
and flips the switches and gets close to a Wurlitzer organ sound
on his spaghetti western themes. Psychedelic, baby, from a steel
guitar no less, an instrument most people picture as something
for pot-bellied old fogeys in nameless honkytonk backwaters.
While most of the album consists of an interesting stylistic
array of instruments (everything from Tin Pan Alley to Waikiki
Beach to Western swing to spaghetti western), there are three
sparkling vocal tracks performed by Bloodshot's trio of rising
and critically recognized female singers, Sally Timms, Kelly
Hogan, and Neko Case. (Sultry and cocky don't even start to cover
it!) While each of the vocal tracks borders on brilliant, Rauhouse's
performance of the Les Paul and Mary Ford classic "The World
Is Waiting For the Sunrise" is my favorite vocal track of
2002. With Case scatting along without once tripping her tongue
on the difficult lyric, Rauhouse takes the natural riki-tik vibe
of the song and revs it up until it literally leaves the ground.
It takes something as light as air to fly the way this track
does. This arrangement is tick-tock tight and the ensemble gives
it a glorious fine effort. This is art. With monster tone.
The entire production drips with the coolness of a Harlem
cocktail lounge at 3 a.m. Rauhouse proves he's no slouch as an
arranger, producer, or musician. The project required more conceptual
thinking than one might imagine "just a steel guitar album"
would. Rauhouse has done a masterful management job. It is indeed
a real steel guitar air show.
* The steel guitar airshow hangars at www.bloodshotrecords.com. One of my favorite
albums of 2002. And if you think you know a little something
about country music, check out www.scottysmusic.com/speedycdt.htm
Contact William Michael Smith at wms-at-rockzilla.net
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