Pribek
Trouble Ain't Over
© 2006 Jack Pribek (809812008828)
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Guitar driven collection of original songs that range from roadhouse stomp to retro funk to bebop.
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The first time I saw guitarist/singer/songwriter Jack Pribek, was in 1981 or’82. I was in the St. Louis area to write a story about a hard rock band that, at the time, was up and coming, cutting edge. They are among the long forgotten. I was covering said band for a rock magazine that was also on the cutting edge. The magazine went belly-up in the mid eighties. So goes the cutting edge.
The details are hazy but somehow, on a chilly November night, I ended up at a basement club in Union, Missouri.
It was small, very smoky and packed with construction workers and bikers. They had a pool table with a sheet of plywood covering the playing surface. There were three backwoods, tattooed go-go’s dancing on top.
There was an aging crooner singing country standards backed by a band of teenagers that looked like they were on work release from the Lynyrd Skynyrd home for wayward boys. On stage right, was a tall, lanky, greasy-haired kid in a jean jacket playing a Les Paul through a Marshall stack on Ferlin Husky, Red Sovine and Dave Dudley songs. He was raw, that’s for sure. He sounded like he was trying to mutate the guitar styling's of Dicky Betts and Sonny Sharrock into some sort of space alien, hillbilly music. Somehow, it worked. It was far different from anything one would expect from a wet behind the ears kid in a cover band, smack dab in the middle of the new wave.
Jack reflected on that period a few years down the road.
“Well, we had this little garage band. We played rock stuff; and southern rock. Allman Brothers and Stones and such, you know. We were all real young like, 16 years old so, we weren’t playing in bars. We’d set up at a shelter in the park or play at somebody’s keg party.
This guy, Bob Bridgeman was his name, somehow he heard about us. He was looking for a band to back him at these little honky-tonks. He played country songs. We wanted to rock and roll but this guy was playing real nightclubs and that whole scene appealed to us. It was like the forbidden area. Anyway, he promised to let us play some rock stuff too, so we went along.
Now, I had only been playing for a couple of years. The truth is, all I knew how to do was improvise. I wasn’t real good at figuring out what other guitar players did so, I would just blow. Bob would look over at me and say; “Key of D”, and just start strumming. ‘Cause he knew I didn’t know any of the songs by name anyway. Then, he would glance at me and tilt his head when it was time for a solo. If he liked what I did, he would glance and tilt again and I would do another. I was always working to get that second glance.”
Throughout the rest of the eighties and early nineties, our paths crossed at random a few times. I saw him stand up and blow the room away one night at a jam session (by this time he had switched from the Les Paul to his familiar Telecaster) in San Jose. I ran into at a truck stop in Albuquerque on my way to L.A. I saw him in Jackson Mississippi, playing at a Ramada Inn I was staying at while doing a story on the Subway Lounge for a German travel magazine. If we had the time, we have some drinks and talk. Wide-ranging, wonderful conversations that would, inevitably, delve into philosophy but, curiously, would avoid anything to do with music. I always remembered the spark and fire that the skinny, nervous kid brought to the table way back in Union; inadvertently cross-pollinating free-form jazz with shit-kicking country songs.
He called me once from Minneapolis and said he was writing some songs. He was going to put a band together and wanted to know if I was “connected”. I told him to send me a tape but I was not in the business of facilitating label deals. It never materialized.
It seemed like he was developing a unique thing way back when and it seemed that he was getting farther and farther away from it while playing in the endless string of loungy cover bands. If you pressed him, he would say; “This is the only job I could find where they let me sit around a motel room all day and play guitar”.
The truth about that is, he didn’t fit in. He once was fired from a top forty outfit because he wouldn’t play like Eddie Van Halen. He lost a lucrative spot during the country music line dance epidemic because; he refused to abandon his penchant for improvising guitar solos.
The last time I saw him we were both in bad shape. It was in Panama City in 1991. I was there on an ill-fated second honeymoon with my ex-wife. While dining at a franchise, chain type, bar and grill, I heard my name shouted from the bar area. Jack came wobbling over in a, not so elegantly loaded, fashion. He had a date in tow, a flashy looking, little past her prime but probably wealthy, bleach blond type that is indigenous to Florida. It was an uncomfortable moment. The wife obviously did not approve and Jack, even loaded, seemed to sense this. He wrote down my number but avoided the issue when asked where he was playing.
So, we lost touch. Jack obviously had some demons and seemed destined to be another casualty; One more creative soul that didn’t have what it took to get to next level.
Then, last month (August 2007), I was visiting friends in London. I was looking through a stack of CDs; given to them by another friend who reviews music for various publications. I came across one entitled “Trouble Ain’t Over” by an artist named Pribek. I looked at the liner notes and found that it was indeed my old acquaintance. I asked if I could borrow the disc. My friend said, “Take it, she gives us a bunch of them every couple of months, we usually don’t ever listen to most of them”.
For some reason, I was apprehensive about playing the disc. I didn’t want to hear another washed-up, once promising talent who finally put out a vanity record.
Well, I wasn’t and it isn’t. “Trouble Ain’t Over” is a vibrant record by a seasoned performer. It doesn’t come across like a debut album. It sounds more like an effort from a songwriter whose career is in mid swing.
It does not fit the current trend of abiding by the rigid parameters of a specific “genre”. Stylistically, “Trouble” is all over the map, much like the approach taken by The Band or Little Feat in the Lowell George era.
There are blues in here with the ominous title track and the gospel tinged “Two Trains” and, straight up rockers like the stalker anthem “Follow You”. There is the whole tone, cartoon jazz of “Munk” and the cornstalk surf groove of “Cannonball” on the instrumental side. There are tales of desperation; “Rule Of Seven” and the outstanding “Salvation”. “I Let The Whisky, Kiss Me (Goodnight) is a sawdust floor, blue collar, rave-up. And, there is sly humor on the more funk inspired “Soul Searching” and “Country Mile”.
Throughout the side, Pribek conjures up banshee wails, soulful bends and lightning runs from the trusty Tele. His voice is an un-polished baritone that is sometimes gruff, sometimes soothing, always lived in.
It seems fitting that this debut record from an obscure but evolved artist is produced by Lou Whitney and that the session band is The Skeletons. By fate or design, I don’t know that Pribek could have found a group of players more sympathetic to his eclectic cause.
I, like most everybody else, missed this record’s release last year. That’s ok though, because the songs aren’t time sensitive.
Jack, I’m glad you made it through to the place you are now and I’m looking forward to what comes next.
Stu Lassiter, 2007
Pribek Track info;
Trouble Ain’t Over
Tracks:
1. I Let The Whisky Kiss Me (Goodnight) 2:36
2. Salvation 4:23
3. Country Mile 5:13
4. Rule Of Seven 3:30
5. Cannonball 2:50
6. Soul Searching 4:23
7. Follow You 4:08
8. Two Trains 3:26
9. Munk 5:26
10. Trouble Ain’t Over 4:22
All songs written by Jack Pribek except “I Let The Whisky Kiss Me (Goodnight)”, written by Jack Pribek, Bill Dees, Dave Abner.
All songs published by House Of Dees Music (B.M.I.) and Column Two Music (B.M.I.).
Produced and recorded by Lou Whitney. Assisted by Eric Schuchmann.
Mastered by Randy Kling.
Jack Pribek- vocals and guitar
D. Clinton Thompson- guitar
Joe Terry- keyboards
Bobby Lloyd Hicks- drums
Lou Whitney- bass
Bill Dees- harmony vocals
Joy Steele- harmony vocals
Robin Rees- harmony vocals
Gang vocals on “Country Mile” by Ryan Lear, Robert Arnold, Sam Clanton, and Bill Dees
reviews
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Loved the Jack CD
author: Bobby BuchananThis CD is great. Shows Jack's music ability and his wonderful song writing. I know he really knows how to pick a guitar and Cannonball is a great example. Listen to the words and learn a lot!
This is a great cd, a very good selection of songs
author: Jeanie BoultinghouseI enjoy this cd very much, the songs are really good, some are a little different, and I like that, not just the same o same o stuff. I let the whisky, kiss me goodnight, is one of my favorites, but, I liked them all. The instrumentals are really nice. Yes, in deed, I like this cd