ERIC FOLKERTH
Songs for the Time Being
Selfish Giant Records, 2000
Nowadays it's not too difficult or expensive for some one to record and release an album. The bad thing about this is that too many wannabes who shouldn't be making music are, and are glutting the market, keeping many good artists from being heard.
The good thing about this is that others who might not normally get a change to record and release and album are getting to. Once in a while one of these DIY rookies will use their record releasing opportunity to astound and amaze us. Eric Folkerth is one of these.
Dallas singer/guitarist Eric Folkerth's new CD, Songs for the Time Being, is a labor of love at least two years in the making. At first glimpse his CD looks like any other folk/roots CD you've ever seen. But give it some time and you'll find yourself in a secluded log cabin drinking hot chocolate, stoking the fireplace, and listening to a new friend tell you his life story and play songs on his guitar that move you to tears.
The song writing on this record is just amazing. "Mom Went Bungee Jumping" sounds like a novelty title, but it's actually a sad song about a middle-aged woman who once had dreams and ideas that were laid to rest in favor of raising a family that has now estranged her. "The Birches of Moscow" is a miniature epic that praises the reuniting of two countries that have been enemies for years. "Deep Blue Grey" finds the writer pondering a lost love while driving northbound through a cold front. ("The hills and the clouds, lost in Deep Blue Grey; the love I thought I'd found, lost in Deep Blue Grey...")
Eric has done something very special with this recordin connecting the songs on the album to song commentary on his website. So once you've heard "The Brontosaurus Threw a Potluck" and wondered whatthe heck that song was about, you can go to Eric's website and he'll tellyou what he had in mind while writing the song. In addition, he'll inform you that the creature we know as the Brontosaurus actually doesn'texist! These song notes are absolutely fascinating-you feel as thoughyou are sitting down talking to Eric personally about his life and songs.
This album is a very "produced" one, complete with piano, bass, drums, mandolin, male and female backing vocals, MIDI strings-the whole works. Eric has anticipated complaints of the album being overproduced already and consequently included this wonderful bit of commentary in the online production notes:
"Some purists in acoustic/folk music may be disappointed by the "over" production of this album. The way I look at it is like this: these songs. . .have two lives...the life where I wrote them...which is also how I play them live...and the life that I "hear" for them in my head. That's what we've tried to capture on the CD. When I hear these songs, I hear the strings, or the mandolin, or the background vocals, etc. ..."
Actually, the extra production does wonders for the songs, making them more enjoyable an intensifying their impact. One song in particular that benefits from the production is "The Road Goes On". I love the synthetic but powerful guitar distortion that opens the song and segues it together in places. The song has such an odd feel-it's as if Elton John wrote the song on guitar and then took it to the piano. Sometimes I think the production could benefit from a little more subtlety though, as the current production is sometimes too rough and blunt for the songs (I'm thinking of the slower songs in particular here).
Even though I know Eric was trying to be careful with the length of the songs, all of the songs over six minutes long would have benefited from some cutting, not in lyrical content but in musical passages that are repeated too many times. Best example is the eight-minute "The Birches of Moscow," which goes back to the "Birches of Moscow, East Texas pines" chorus so many times you're ready to kill something by the end of the song. The drummer-boy snares at the end of the song only reinforce that we've heard that chorus too much-they seem a desperate attempt at sustaining interest, just like adding a children's choir at the end of a song often is.
Regardless of a few problems, Eric has proven with this CD that he's not just another coffeehouse guitar strummer. He is a legitimate singer/songwriter that is waiting to be discovered, and I hope it won't be long until be is. Oh, one more thing: look for a guest appearance by Rocky Athas, guitarist from the legendary Southernrock band Black Oak Arkansas.
- DavidGasten
dallasmusic.com
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