The Tom Russell Band
Poor Man's Dream

THE REVIEW

Tom Russell is a unique character: born in Los Angeles in 1953, he graduated in criminology and has a past as a globetrotting musician, perpetually seeking fortune; after many years of hard work, he managed to establish himself as one of the key figures in American songwriting, thanks to his extraordinary tenacity and above all an unmistakable style that embodies the various souls of rural America in a mix of country, rock, western music, and tex-mex. As one of his fellow songwriters put it, Tom Russell was born with the gift of a golden voice, baritone, intense and highly emotional, which will improve with age, becoming increasingly warm and expressive, marking countless unforgettable songs since 1984, the year of debut with his Tom Russell Band to this day.

"Poor's Man's Dream" from 1989, the third album released with the Tom Russell Band, is perhaps his most known and celebrated work, and also his most commercially impactful; it is a great masterpiece of American folk rock, an album that highlights all the peculiarities of this artist, among which the most important is undoubtedly the gift of being, above all, a storyteller, endowed with uncommon charisma and credibility. Indeed, it's impossible not to be moved by songs like "Blue Wing" or "Veteran's Day", the alchemy between that timeless semi-acoustic sound and the vibrant intensity of a voice that brings to life stories of itinerant musicians and soldiers never returned home is truly something extraordinary, unique, a distinctive and unmistakable style, also capable of offering love songs like the nostalgic "Navajo Rug", "Spanish Burgundy", filled with alcohol, dreams, desires, and suggestions and especially "Outbound Plane" and "Walking On The Moon", ballads of rare beauty, more lively and joyful the first, intimate, and dreamy the second, universal songs, to dedicate to any loved one, not to mention the classic, brilliant, and engaging country rock of "Heart Of A Working Man" and, to a lesser extent, "Under The Gun". Another great fascination of Tom Russell's music is undoubtedly the constant presence of western and tex-mex sounds, which in the 2000s will even become dominant features, and in "Poor Man's Dream" they manifest in songs like "La Frontera", a classic, slow, haunting waltz punctuated by the violin, the already mentioned "Navajo Rug" and "Gallo Del Cielo", six minutes of pressing western epic, where the atmospheres of old Mexico are revived in the legend of an unbeatable fighting rooster. These last two songs, two great classics of this artist, were previously recorded by the great Ian Tyson, one of Tom Russell's major inspirations, along with Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and writers like Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski.

Almost all the songs in "Poor Man's Dream" are staples of Tom Russell's repertoire, which were covered multiple times, not only by the already mentioned Ian Tyson but also by Johnny Cash and cult artists like Dave Alvin, Joe Ely, Nanci Griffith, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Suzy Bogguss, and that says a lot about this artist's intrinsic value, a great singer, an author of great culture beyond just music, never a detached observer, always a great shaper of emotion, of which "Poor Man's Dream" represents only a fragment, albeit a very significant one, of a long discography full of masterpieces.