Highways of Gold

Harvey Thomas Young, 1990

Label: Mapleshade Records, Wildchild!
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Stereophile raves, “The minute you hear Young’s…voice, you know that this is not just another faultlessly dead audiophile recording…The songs are copacetic, and the band really cooks.” Austin country music legend Harvey Thomas Young inspired me to start Wildchild! with these charismatic songs about his snuff-sniffin’ Grandma and his beer-induced lusts. The warm wail of Junior’s pedal steel guitar frames Harvey’s hops-and-barley-soaked growl. Two Blood, Sweat & Tears bandmates, Lou Marini and Larry Willis, wonderfully enhance Harvey’s authentic, colorful narratives with in-the-pocket arrangements of his country ballads and barnstormers. Michael Fremer recommends: “Unequal parts jazzy urban sophistication, country, Tex-Mex border dust, and some fifties rock…Take a chance and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

Highways of Gold: Tracklist and Reviews
·         1. Whisperin’ Sweet Nothins -Listen to Full Song
·         2. Champions Of Desire
·         3. Highways Of Gold
·         4. Grandpa Johnnie -Listen to Sample
·         5. Games Of The Ancients
·         6. Dreams And Distant Shores
·         7. People Keep Fallin’ In Love
·         8. The Emerald Islands
·         9. Let It Flow
·         10. Bad Feelings -Listen to Sample
·         11. The Table Is Gone
·         12. Start Again

REVIEW by Stereophile
Mapleshade has spun off its Wildchild! subsidiary to release musical forms other than pure blues and jazz. Its first disc, Harvey Thomas Young’s Highways of Gold, bodes well for the series. Young, a Texas singer/songwriter, has put together an eclectic band for this outing that includes Junior Brown. ¡Ay, mamacita! The minute you hear Young’s hoarsely straining voice, you know that this is not just another faultlessly dead audiophile recording it ain’t pretty, but it gets the job done. The songs are copacetic, and the band really cooks. -from QuarterNotes by Wes Phillips

REVIEW by The Tracking Angle
Take an audiophile producer with a jazz sensibility, a no bullshit gravel voiced, West Texas country singer/songwriter, then add a legendary Austin, Texas pedal steel guitar player (Junior Brown) and a jazz pianist whose played with everyone from Gary Bartz, to Jackie McLean to Blood Sweat and Tears (Larry Willis). Oh, and add a sax player, a fiddler, some gospel singers and a jazz infused rhythm section. What do you get? A bizarre cross cultural experiment; the ingredients for a potentially disastrous mess.

Fortunately for all concerned here, it adds up to a unique homebrew hybrid consisting of unequal parts jazzy urban sophistication, country, Tex-Mex border dust, and some fifties rock, all ably serving the cause of Harvey Thomas Young’s gruff, yet intimate songs.

The title tune, Highways Of Gold, a bitter, heartfelt articulation of the “life sucks, then you die” view of the world, serves as a paradigm for the album. As you listen to Thomas’ plaintive voice on the chorus – backed only by his acoustic guitar: “There’s no highways of gold, there’s no rivers of brilliant diamonds, there only hearts made of stone and the money the world survives on” you can clearly hear a kick ass commercial country band breathing chart popping energy into the song. You can also hear how that action would ruin the chilling, almost uncomfortable intimacy of the moment.

When the drums and piano come in, its not with a country crack. They kind of insinuate themselves into the mix with a delicacy not usually found in this genre of music: partly due to the deftness of the playing and partly due to the simple miking which places the drummer way in the background.

It takes some time getting used to the off the beat playing accompanying the straightforward West Texas sensibility of Young. At first the two styles clash, then the accompaniment mixed way back ³ seems like an annoying afterthought. Its only after your ear become accustomed to the strange combination, that you begin to appreciate the audacity of this fascinating project. It doesn’t always work, (Bad Feelings starts with a piano line out of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, turns into an early 60s Phil Spector vamp and finally falls flat on its face) but when it does, it hits a home run as on the title tune and on the ethereal Dreams and Distant Shores.

The minimally miked analogue recording is redolent with room sound and the natural projection of acoustic instruments playing live in a space. Young and his acoustic guitar are highlighted in the mix, with the other instruments playing dreamily in the background. I would have preferred more drum kit, and more of Junior Brown’s achingly gorgeous pedal steel, but compared to commercial recordings, this is a brutally honest portrayal of live music.

Some of these tunes deserve commercial treatment (Start Again for example) and I hope Young gets the recognition and financial reward such treatment would bring him. But you won’t find more effective renditions of Young’s material than he gives them on this very special disc. Take a chance and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. -Michael Fremer