Rick Shea
Album: Sweet Bernadine
Label: Tres Pescadores
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.rickshea.com

My acquaintance with Rick Shea and his music has come via my friends Peter Davies and Gabrielle Monk of that excellent Liverpool-based Americana band, The Good Intentions. Rick produced and played on The Intentions' recent album "Travelling Companion" [reviewed in these pages] and, indeed, I have seen Rick perform at a house concert at Pete and Gabi's home in Liverpool.

Rick was, for several years, a member of[ and opening act for] Dave Alvin's Guilty Men. Rick plays all manner of stringed instruments including guitar, pedal steel, mandolin and banjo [and I'm sure many more]. Aside from his multi-instrumental prowess, he is also a fine songwriter. Rick cites his main influence as Merle Haggard, although Lefty Frizell and Buck Owens also made their mark.

"Sweet Bernadine" is Rick's latest solo album, following on from 2009's "Shelter Valley Blues" and is named after his childhood hometown of San Bernadino in Southern California. San Bernardino, a railroad town sixty miles east of Los Angeles, is one of the oldest communities in California. "Sweet Bernadine" is also the title of a song by Rick in which he describes leaving this "tired old town" at the age of eighteen but how it is still part of him.

The album actually begins with the acoustic, atmospheric, Mexican-flavoured [courtesy of Skip Edwards' accordion] "Mexicali Train" in which the heartbroken narrator graphically describes a train journey from Mexicali , which he takes in order to "lose himself" following the end of a love affair. The narrator imagines the ghosts of Kerouac and Cassady drifting across the open plains as he struggles with the ghosts that followed him onto the train. A great opening to the album.

The next song is equally atmospheric. "Mariachi Hotel" describes, in filmic detail, the goings on in this musicians' lodging house in East LA. The song has a languid feel and contains references to Dracula!

"Gregory Ray DeFord" tells the story of an honest man who is driven to desperate measures when he loses everything due to the recession. He dies an outlaw but Rick makes the point that he is not so very far from you and me. Another excellent song.

Whilst the album is mainly acoustic, Rick does break out his Telecaster on several tracks, most notably on "Shake It Little Sugaree", a bluesy piece of swamp rock which would appeal to fans of the late JJ Cale and Rick's former employer Dave Alvin.

The aforementioned Peter Davies of The Good Intentions co-wrote "My Darling Lives In Darlington" with Rick and this delightful song, with its harmony vocals, acoustic guitar and accordion, would not sound out of place on a Good Intentions album.

Rick reaches far back into his family's history for the amazing story of "John Shea From Kenmare". John was Rick's great-great-grandfather who emigrated from County Kerry to America. He enlisted in the Union Army in the Civil War but was captured by the Confederates and held in dreadful conditions in a prison camp in Virginia. John only survived because a young Irish girl [also from Kerry] heard him singing and started to bring him food. Rick does a fine job of turning personal story into a folk song.

The Telecaster comes out again for a jazzy version of Hank Williams' "Honky Tonk Blues". Rick's mournful vocals are complemented by his fluent, bluesy guitar playing which suit Hank's melancholic lyrics perfectly.

The only other cover song on the album is a charming, old-timey live duet between Rick and Mary McCaslin on Roy Acuff's classic train song "Streamline Cannonball".

Rick Shea is clearly a man of many talents-producer, multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter. He has been described as "one of Southern California's best-kept secrets". On the strength of this album he deserves to be known on a much wider basis than that.

Peter Cowley