DAVE CARTER & TRACY GRAMMER
Little Blue Egg
Red House 251

www.redhouserecords.com
 

If you encounter a list of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century and Dave Carter’s name not on it, walk away. Carter (1952-2002) was raised by an evangelical mother, rejected doctrinaire Christianity, but remained a seeker and a mystic for his entire life. He released three albums with Tracy Grammer and, though it would be inaccurate to call Little Blue Egg a fourth, this eleven-track cobbling of home recordings and demo tapes will certainly thrill Carter/Grammer fans. Several of the tracks feel homespun; others such as “Cross of Jesus” have raw edges that were tacked down in latter concert performances. But who cares about polished production when one man with one pen can describe a trucker’s life like this: “God is my witness, poker’s my game/Whiskey’s my poison, forgotten’s my name/And it’s biscuits when I’m hungry and it’s diesel when I’m dry/And it’s 18 wheels of lonesome for the tears you cry.” The songs traverse themes for which Carter won renown: the open spaces of the land and the heart, love with both sentimentality and hard knocks intact, mythology, redneck preachers, and the fragility of life. Hearing these songs will make you weep for the joy of hearing them, and quake from the injustice that such a talent was taken away too soon.

— Rob Weir