By Hal Horowitz
“You can’t tell a book by looking at its cover,” as Bo Diddley so memorably reminded us. And that cliché applies to the art adorning Americana/blues rocker Randy Lee Riviere’s ‘Farmland Blues.’ What appears on the outside like a comfy folk album due to the tranquil painting of a farmhand carrying a sack and a few horses in a field, doesn’t prepare you for the raw, frequently riveting, guitar-based rocking dominating the generous 15 track, hour-long disc.
The singer/songwriter splits time between two professions and locales. He has residences in Montana where he’s a wildlife biologist (some songs reference environmental issues) and Nashville for when he’s in singer/songwriting mode. Also essential to Riviere’s success is producer/drummer/songwriter Tom Hambridge, a name familiar to anyone perusing liner notes of roots/blues rock albums of the past decade. He assisted on the artist’s previous album, ‘Concrete Blues’ (2023) and returns to provide production and musical guidance (he’s a drummer), also co-penning eight tracks.
Take a pinch of ZZ Top (‘Tres Hombres’ is one of Riviere’s favorite albums), add Drive-By Truckers-styled vocals and talk/sung lyrics, throw in deep swampy vocals you’d find on any Tony Joe White disc, then sprinkle with Neil Young’s grungy Crazy Horse dust and you’ve got a fair sense of what he’s after.
Offerings such as “Cynical” with its slow, layered, grinding guitars (four six-stringers including Riviere are credited) and what seem to be politically incisive lyrics “Can you tell me what they’ve done?/Nothing at all” are growled by the singer as if waking from a particularly bad dream. But there’s also low-key sensitively to “Bird Watchin’” with acoustic guitar, gleaming reverbed electric lines, a melody as shimmering as any he’s written and reflective lyrics about how much he loves the titular activity.
He goes slow blues boogie on “December 1980,” a tribute to John Lennon (that’s when he was murdered), borrowing some lowdown licks from John Lee Hooker as he sings with a trembling rumble “I turned on the radio/Heard they shot my brother down…My brother changed the world/Like a sting, like a lightning spark.” Intense and powerful.
The title track ramps up taut energy. He describes the difficult life of a music loving farmhand with guitars ringing and Riviere’s voice bellowing out the words “I’m hunchback permanent/Small potato paycheck…I got the farmhand blues.” And “On My Way On Down” captures the muck and grime of blues in all its lowdown qualities as a lead guitar (one of four) inserts a solo that’s frightening and gutsy.
Even softer songs exude ominous undertones as Riviere often examines the murkier side of life. The grinding multi-tracked guitars and pulsating rhythm section that typifies selections such as “Alabama” punch at your ears like a boxer circling the ring, waiting for the eventual knockout. While the 15 tunes could have been slimmed down to a more manageable dozen, this is the sound of an artist comfortable in his own skin, unafraid to push boundaries in blues, rock, and even folk towards what he hears in his head.
The result is that behind its soft, bucolic artwork, ‘Farmhand Blues’ is a tense, gritty aural treatise that, like the finest art, refuses to soften its blows for commercial palatability.