03 Cold Steel Blues

Cold Steel Blues

The blues arrive third. Cold steel is old language in this music — rails, barrels, blades, the things that do not warm up no matter how long you hold them — and the title puts this song squarely in a tradition that runs back a good deal further than country rock does.

A record that opens with a jukebox and reaches the blues by track three knows exactly which lineage it is standing in.

Stormy — John B. Wells on vocals and guitar.

Long before the Caravan, the voice that carries the broadcast was doing something else with itself. Stormy is a country rock record written and sung by John B. Wells — he wrote every song on it but one, and the arrangements are the work of someone who has spent a career listening to how sound is put together.

It is worth remembering what that career actually was. This is the man whose voice carried Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter and F-22 Raptor projects, national film trailers and museum exhibits — work that collected Emmy, Clio and Marconi awards. A composer, musician, writer, actor, martial arts instructor and aviator, described on his own site as a Renaissance man who savours the pursuit of knowledge from the arcane to the esoteric. The record is one more room in that house.

Every song is a Wells original except “You Don't Bring Me Flowers.” The album button adds all fifteen downloads to your cart at the single-track price; buy any one of them on its own instead if you would rather.