Malcolm Holcombe - Come Hell Or High Water

  by Kimberly Bright

published: 14 / 1 / 2019

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63-year-old singer-songwriter Malcolm Holcombe is from one of the most disparaged states in the U.S., North Carolina. The political sensitivity extended to segments of the very poorest citizens in America has never been extended to rural southern poor whites, including those living in North Carolina, where generations of families have struggled to eke out a living in difficult terrain since the area was an English colony. Nancy Isenberg, the author of ‘White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America ‘, describes the position of Holcombe's home state as being “an imperial renegade territory, a swampy refuge for the poor and landless” that was “wedged between proud Virginians and upstart South Carolinians.” Poverty has not been substantially budged by efforts like FDR’s New Deal, President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, or more recent New South gentrification. Despite the influx of money and newcomers from other areas of the country, there remain the long-time residents, still fiercely independent and suspicious of authority. It was this area of the Appalachian Mountains that Holcombe grew up and forged his traditional but individually expressive country-folk music, full of local folklore, ghost stories, and characters. The well-crafted ‘Come Hell or High Water’ is Holcombe's thirteenth album and includes collaborations with Iris DeMent, who provides magnificent backing vocals (‘I Don't Wanna Disappear’), and Greg Brown. Holcombe sounds like a man who has been through a lot. His voice sounds as though it were carved out of an ancient oak tree in the middle of Appalachia – if that old-growth tree also had a 40-pack year smoking history. Holcombe's acoustic guitar work is subtle and beautiful, at no point conveying the sense of impending doom found on Bob Dylan's songs about the same subjects (‘The Ballad of Hollis Brown’, ‘Masters of War’). The subject matter on this album is often brutal: suicide, loneliness, isolation, poverty, loss, alienation, dysfunctional families, and friends and relatives who can't stay sober, out of jail, or keep from ruining everyone's Christmas (“I never got what I wanted, I never kept what I got”). The tone of the music and Holcombe's voice is not despairing or depressing, though. He sings with a world weary ruefulness, fatalism, and detachment, similar to Roy Harper, Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard. ‘It Is What It Is’ captures this outlook and feeling well. “Feelin' my age, feelin' cynical and wrong/Too scared to believe I belong anymore,” he sings on ‘New Damnation Alley’. There is so much to admire on this album, from Holcombe's matchless storytelling ability to his affection for the mysterious region depicted in his haunting songs.

Track Listing:-

1 Left Alone
2 I Don't Wanna Disappear
3 New Damnation Alley (feat. Iris Dement)
4 It Is What It Is
5 Black Bitter Moon (feat. Iris Dement)
6 October Mornin'
7 Old North Side (feat. Iris Dement)
8 Legal Tender
9 Gone by the Ol' Sunrise (feat. Iris Dement)
10 Brother's Keeper (feat. Iris Dement)
11 In the Winter (feat. Iris Dement)
12 Merry Christmas (feat. Iris Dement)
13 Torn and Wrinkled

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/malcolmholcombe
http://www.malcolmholcombe.com/
https://twitter.com/malcolmholcombe
https://www.youtube.com/user/malcolmholcombe
https://plus.google.com/109995157853252912523

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