Tom Russell

Henry Cabot Beck March 3, 2005 4:00AM

[
          {
            "name": "Related Stories / Support Us Combo",
            "component": "11576102",
            "insertPoint": "4",
            "requiredCountToDisplay": "6"
          },{
            "name": "Air - Billboard - Inline Content",
            "component": "11576098",
            "insertPoint": "2/3",
            "requiredCountToDisplay": "3"
          },
          
          {
            "name": "Air - MediumRectangle - Inline Content - Mobile Display Size 2",
            "component": "11576099",
            "insertPoint": "12",
            "requiredCountToDisplay": "12"
          },{
            "name": "Air - MediumRectangle - Inline Content - Mobile Display Size 2",
            "component": "11576099",
            "insertPoint": "4th",
            "startingPoint": "16",
            "requiredCountToDisplay": "12"
          }
          
            ,{
              "name": "RevContent - In Article",
              "component": "12633456",
              "insertPoint": "3/5",
              "requiredCountToDisplay": "5"
            }
          
        ]

Tom Russell is best known as a hip cowboy/country singer-songwriter, and he's always interesting in that capacity. But this new disc is something else entirely -- it's Russell's odd, brilliant introduction and homage to the deviant geniuses who made life interesting in the last two-thirds of the 20th century. There's the late carny midget and cosmic firefly Little Jack Horton, who really kicks things off on the third track and reappears throughout. There's satirist/martyr/saint Lenny Bruce, folk-blues chief cook and bottle-washer Dave Van Ronk, Woody Guthrie, beat clown prince Jack Kerouac, Edward Abbey, Harry Partch, and the poet/lush/shaman Charles Bukowski. Each of these junkies and jazzmen and visionary losers gets a few moments of carnival spotlight time in this rambling collection of tunes, narrative, and actual spoken-word excerpts, all strung together on a rocking mystery train that runs through the hipster tunnel of love, through the heart and soul of America's starry, smoky night.

Tom Russell

This Week's Issue