| CD REVIEW J-Tex And The Volunteers |
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Band : J-Tex And The Volunteers Having been born in Detroit, but raised in Copenhagen (Denmark), young Jens Einar Sörensen got bitten very early in life by the American Roots music bug, wanting and getting his first guitar at the age of just five! He started playing festivals with his mother’s friends, and soon even wrote his own music. At the age of 20 the young man made a pilgrimage journey to the US. Starting off in Nashville, Tennessee with just his guitar on his back and paint brushes in his hands, he then travelled all over the Southern states in the company of one John Heiner (mentor and fire-burning carnivalpainter known also as “The One Legged Man”) which led him to play seconds to many an American Country old-timer as well as younger musicians in the field…picking up the surname of J-Tex along the way. J-Tex returned to Europe in 1990. With a couple of friends he filled up a van with an assortment of instruments, tape recorders, and miscellanous other things, and set out for the Tuscany region in Italy. The first months wold be spent in Florence, where he could be found “busking” every night. Soon enough, J-Tex had found the necessary people to form his first band Einstein’s Explosive Bullie Brothers, which set out to play every little town in the region, eventually winning 1st prize in the International Buskerawards. Mid ‘90s saw J-Tex return to Denmark, from where he then again set out for the US with some friends and his trusted guitar in hand. Continuing to write and perform on the way, he’d end up playing both sleazy beer-joints and more arty-farthy venues alike, even doing the occasional radio performance. 2001 saw J-Tex back in his hometown Copenhagen. It was then that he founded The Volunteers as his steady backing band (I’m sorry I can’t tell you who they are, but none of my sources even mentions either name of the stand-up bassist/ second guitarist and/ or percussionist/ drummer), and since then the trio has played the scene up and down Europe’s roads. Finally, in 2005, he was contracted by Swedish label Heptown for the recording of his first bundle of songs during the Summer of that year, and issued as the Lost Between Clouds Of Tumbleweed And Space album in 2006 (which went on to win them an award, by the way). Since then, J-Tex settled in an appartment in the Danish town of Österbro, where he installed a home studio. For the lyrical content of One Of These Days, J-Tex and his Volunteers decided to move “…further into the rural American South, emerging with songs about lovable hicks who face hard luck and harder times…” (taken from the biography which went with our promo copy of the album, which further states) “We care about the poor, beaten down types and try to portray them, in the untrue stories that are my songs, with warmth, humor, solidarity and loyalty. I can see myself in many places in the roster of characters thar are found in our songs, and I know from experience that the best way to survive a cruel and hard world is to be able to laught at yourself…” Stylistically, the band plays a very nice hybrid of traditional Country, Folk, Rootsrock, and Bluegrass. Musically this means what you get is mostly acoustic guitar with a bit of banjo or mandolin here, a shard of violin there, a bit of harmonica elsewhere, and the occasional electric guitar (lap steel?) in the background sprinkled in for good taste and finishing! All brought with such a wonderful feeling for Roots music, you’d swear these musicians were operating from out of the South of the US instead of Denmark! There’s a couple of notable details about this album. First of all, it brought the legendary Kim Hüttel (the Danish producer who’d been behind such acts as Johnny Madsen, Sort Sol and Kim Larsen) out of a 10-year retirement from the music business. Meeting up with J-Tex made him come to that decision, and led him to state on the cover of the album that working with J-Tex made him rediscover his passion and love for music! High praise for a man with Hüttel’s past!!! Secondly, the album features the track “Big Bad Woman”, one of the first songs Jenswrote while still in his teens. Thirdly, the album features the collaboration of American (she’s from Texas) Country and Rockabilly singer Lynda Kay. The band had found Kay through the Internet, and immediatelly fell for her distinct voice. So, when the band found out she was to perform in Malmö, Sweden, she was sent an invitation to spend some days in Copenhagen and put down some vocals to tape. Invitation which she obviously accepted, and she eventually spent 3 days in J-Tex’s appartment to record backing vocals to the songs “Getting It All Wrong” and “Paradise”. Additionally, the two also recorded vocals to Kay’s own tender duet ballad “All I Wanted Was You”. Which is one of the 6 songs off the album the band posted at myspace.com/jtexandthevolunteers (samples of the rest of the album can also be listened to a little further down the page). Forthly…and lastly, the band finishes their album with the very beautiful instrumental “Banjo Surf”…its title explanatory enough… Nice album, and definitely one I’d recommend to any of the Concrete Web readers who get the occasional urge to set aside the aggressivity of the music they usually deal with, and listen to some classy Americana Roots music!!! 90/100 Tony. |