× Johnny Dowd to Europe with "Do The Gargon"

Johnny Dowd to Europe with "Do The Gargon"

09-09-2013

After the recent release of "Do The Gargon" on his own Mother Jinx label, Johnny Dowd will be back in Europe for a tour trough The Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. See all tourdates at the bottom of this message.



"For most of his curiously aberrant career, Johnny Dowd has trafficked in a form of outsider Americana which drew on noble antecedents while simultaneously subverting the roots expectations with bursts of atonal Beefheartian noise and pulp-fiction lyrics of grim gothic irony. So when Gargon, the antihero of this latest album, announces, “My misery with you I would love to share”, you tend to fear the worst.

But what's this? Gargon seems to be having fun, musically at least. “Gargon Gets All Biblical”, the track in question, turns out to be an eight-minute buzz-saw-guitar strut, striding along with the panache of his fellow Texans ZZ Top – though it's doubtful Billy Gibbons would essay a guitar line quite as tortured as that which Dowd scrawls across the song. But it's a groove, one unlike any Dowd has devised before, and without a whiff of country about it.

The earthy, funky tone continues with the predatory keyboard throb of “Shaquille”, the hapless Gargon recalling his visits to bar, barbershop and church, and the recurrent response he receives: “You smell like dust!”

Elsewhere, the heavily treated guitar and Fender Rhodes piano of “Gargon Knocks” brings to mind Bitches Brew, while “Gargon's Disco Balls” recalls Led Zeppelin's “Trampled Underfoot” riff, Dowd explaining the character's genesis in parental abandonment: “Gargon's balls hang like twin orbs in a fatherless sky... a motherless child abandoned in a filling station in the great state of Nebraska”. It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for the poor chap, had you not just been exposed to the implications of the sinister “Girl in a Suitcase”.

What's certain about Do the Gargon is that there's nothing else around that sounds quite like this, with its febrile, feverish mix of Texas boogie, punk-metal and distorted jazz-funk. Dowd claims he'd been listening to a lot of Betty Davis and ZZ Top when he was recording it, which explains a lot, including the unexpectedly raffish good humour. “I think it's my most toe-tapping record so far,” he believes, and he's not wrong." - The Independent


Tourdates:
2013.09.12 Utrecht (NL) @ Tivoli Spiegelbar
2013.09.13 Venlo (NL) Perron 55
2013.09.14 Groningen (NL) @ Take Root
2013.09.14 Haarlem (NL) @ De Stad Als Podium
2013.09.15 Eindhoven (NL) @ Buro Beukorkest
2013.09.16 Gent (BE) @ Cafe Video
2013.09.17 Kortijk (BE) @ Den Trap
2013.09.18 London (UK) @ The Windmill
2013.09.19 Suffolk (UK) @ the Bank
2013.09.20 Sheffield (UK) @ Greystones
2013.09.21 Low Mill (UK) @ The Band Room
2013.09.22 Kingston (UK) @ Grey Horse
2013.09.23 Nottingham (UK) @ Guitar Bar
2013.09.24 Manchester (UK) @ Castle
2013.09.25 Birmingham (UK) @ Hare and Hounds
2013.09.26 Bristol (UK) @ The Thunderbolt
2013.09.27 Falmouth (UK) @ Beerwolf

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