Reviews
The Kennedys Album: Smoketree
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 12
Website: https://www.kennedysmusic.com
Named for the tree that has wispy filaments that resemble haze or smoke, the latest from Pete and Maura Kennedy, the latter on lead vocals, more than lives up to their high musical standards with warm, easy rolling Americana as the default, opening with the steel and mandolin colours of Maura's 'Like An Angel', a song about being a channel for creative inspiration ("Don't want to force it when the melody's denied me/Give it time, let it find me where I am") and whenever it strikes to "grab a notebook and a good pen/And let it go like I'm remembering a dream".
Mandolin, harmonica and 5-string banjo laying down the path, the folksy shuffling 'Without Us' is basically a call for rewilding the planet with nature correcting all the "tribulations brought on by humankind" , as the rivers, trees and mountains "march into the ruins and trample them to dust" because the Earth will "do just fine without us when we're gone". The first of their co-writes and delivered as a duet, striking an urgent express train rocking groove 'Long Road To Freedom' was inspired by watching footage of families in the Ukraine leaving their homes and heading for the western border seeking "a place where life and love can grow".
Those who know their 60s cultural trivia will recognise 'Girl On A Motorcycle' as the title of the 1968 erotic romantic drama starring Marianne Faithfull and Alain Delon which, the first film to receive an X rating in America, literally and figuratively mirrored Faithfull's personal journey away from pop princess icon to find herself and become the woman who would sing "why'd you spit on my snatch". That's the heart of the strummed folk-blues song as sculpted by promoters, she breaks free ("Pretty bows and ribbons are for school girls/And you masqueraded for a while/but that's not really you") and finds her own road as it musically fades away on a psychedelic cloud.
Another duet, the title track with its pizzicato picking, chugging rhythm and chimes is Pete's first solo contribution, written as a companion piece to 'The Mystery at Owl Canyon', his third novel in 'The Floodwood Chronicles' about scholar and crime-buster Artemis Fletcher who travels the world combatting a ring of art and antiquities thieves. Set in a remote canyon on the Navajo Nation, with its mystical lyrics ("Raven flew to a swamp willow tree/She spread her wings and she sang to me/Of smoketree and dandelion tea") it seeks to evoke that backdrop in both the music and the visual imagery.
The second writing collaboration, the mandolin-rippling 'Song For A Midday Dawn', was inspired by witnessing 2024's full solar eclipse in a Vermont cornfield and imagining refugees looking up as they bid their homeland goodbye ("We'll sing an exile's song where borders bar our entry/Until we find a harbor where we might live in peace") and finding a ray of hope ("when the trumpet sounds, and tides of time are turning/We'll gather in our power and together find the way") as the sky grew light again and the rooster crowed at the false dawn.
Charting a similar cosmic path of inspiration, another collaboration, the more rhythmically propulsive 'A Star To Guide You' came about after a twilight hike in the woods, thinking of the need at sundown to find a way through the ominous darkness ("You don't want to be here at night when the trees start talkin'/Challenging you to a fright/You don't want to be here alone here at night/You don't want to let the sun set while you're out stalking"), a metaphor for navigating the dark periods of life back into the light ("when you sleep tonight, dream as the mountains dream/And wish you may and you might see you could be/Walkin' with a star to guide you").
Maura's final solo credit, steeped in vintage pedal steel, 'When A Home Becomes A Castle' is a particular standout, inspired by her seeing the sun reflecting golden on the widows of those across the Hudson River and their own in Tarrytown at sunrise and sunset, respective, a song about home and of gratitude for things the way they are as she asks "I wonder when a home becomes a castle/I wonder what it takes to see the light/How much good luck will be enough for me/To make my restless spirit satisfied".
Two by Pete follow, first, the final duet, recalling the optimism of the late 60s, the 12-string twang and shuffle autobiographical 'Meant To Do' with its memories of childhood ("When I was just a kid, I lived my life in books/Tom Swift and The Hardy Boys/Peter Pan and Captain Hook/Then in school they tried to make me toe the line/But I knew I had bigger dreams/Than what they had in mind") and of the Sears guitar Christmas present that set him on his musical path ("The silver pickups sang a song I seemed to know/And in my mind's eye I could see/All the places I would go").
The second is a return to the woods, this time set in 'Puzzlewood', a thickly wooded mysterious park in the Forest of Dean, with him imagining the trail as the path to the mythical village of Nottomun Town, as remembered from hearing a song by Jean Ritchie, where logic and reason fall by the wayside, the lyrics cautioning "you can pass the day down in Puzzlewood/But don't plan on spending the night…It's easy going deep into Puzzlewood/But quite another thing coming out".
The final collaboration, the tumbling notes and pedal steel fade out of 'Heal You' mark a return to a theme of nature and wanting to leave the broken planet healed for the generations to come ("I want to leave a world behind me/That's fit to feed the generations that come after…For the air we breathe is sacred in our lungs/It's the song in our hearts the prayer on our tongues").
It ends with Pete's 'Seeds Of Peace' which starts out with a jazzy, funky acoustic guitar riff evoking Gil Scott-Heron asking "how long this old ship can last/If the flag never flies above half-mast/If the mothers can't stop crying/And the liars won't stop lying/Tell me has the age of reason really passed?", and then switches from minor to major with the second half cast in the cool gospel style of Mavis Staples as it speaks of freedom and peace and how "If we can rise above/And flood the world with love/The fruits of the tree of life would never sour/And the seeds of peace could turn the planet green/And love could grow where the weeds of hate have been". Treemendous.
Mike Davies
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