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Rock/pop

Steve Dawson: Rattlesnake Cage

Rattlesnake Cage
Steve Dawson: Rattlesnake Cage
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Steve Dawson is a versatile Canadian roots musician who’s worked extensively as a solo artist and in a group context. He’s kept busy as a songwriter, sideman, singer, and producer who heads his own label, Black Hen; he’s also a highly respected guitarist. The latter talent is the focus of his most recent solo project, Rattlesnake Cage. Recorded using a single vintage tube Neumann M49 microphone, this all-instrumental album with no overdubs merges a simple but effective recording process with highly intricate playing on superb-sounding guitars, including a jumbo Larrivee, a Weissenborn Hawaiian, a National tricone, and a Taylor 12-string. The closemiked recording reveals in fine detail the timbre of these instruments as well as Dawson’s nimble finger work, and his playing on this all-original set persuasively combines delicacy with gutsiness and a deep sense of traditional roots music beneath which flows an undercurrent of American Primitivism. Dawson’s guitar skills have drawn comparisons to Mississippi John Hurt, T-Bone Burnett, Ry Cooder, and John Fahey. If you like any of those artists or have a fondness for vintage instruments or well-recorded Americana, Dawson’s latest recording may just rattle your cage.

By Jeff Wilson

This will take some explaining, but I can connect the dots between pawing through LPs at a headshop called Elysian Fields in Des Moines, Iowa, as a seventh grader, and becoming the Music Editor for The Absolute Sound. At that starting point—around 1970/71—Elysian Fields had more LPs than any other store in Des Moines. Staring at all the colorful covers was both tantalizing and frustrating. I had no idea who most of the artists were, because radio played only a fraction of what was current. To figure out what was going on, I realized that I needed to build a record collection—and as anyone who’s visited me since high school can testify, I succeeded. Record collecting was still in my blood when, starting in the late 1980s, the Cincinnati Public Library book sale suddenly had an Elysian Fields quantity of LPs from people who’d switched to CDs. That’s where I met fellow record hawk Mark Lehman, who preceded me as music editor of TAS. Mark introduced me to Jonathan Valin, whose 1993 detective novel The Music Lovers depicts the battles between record hawks at library sales. That the private eye in the book, Harry Stoner, would stumble upon a corpse or two while unraveling the mystery behind the disappearance of some rare Living Stereo platters made perfect sense to me. After all, record collecting is serious business. Mark knew my journalistic experience included concert reviews for The Cincinnati Enquirer and several long, sprawling feature articles in the online version of Crawdaddy. When he became TAS music editor in 2008, he contacted me about writing for the magazine. I came on board shortly after the latest set of obituaries had been written for vinyl—and, as fate had it, right when the LP started to make yet another unexpected comeback. Suddenly, I found myself scrambling to document all the record companies pressing vinyl. Small outfits were popping up world-wide, and many were audiophile-oriented, plus already existing record companies began embracing the format again. Trying to keep track of everything made me feel, again, like that overwhelmed seventh grader in Elysian Fields, and as Music Editor I’ve found that keeping my finger on the pulse of the music world also requires considerable detective work. I’ve never had a favorite genre, but when it comes time to sit down and do some quality listening, for me nothing beats a well-recorded small-group jazz recording on vinyl. If a stereo can give me warmth and intimacy, tonal accuracy, clear imaging, crisp-sounding cymbals, and deep, woody-sounding bass, then I’m a happy camper.

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