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Zachary Lucky’s ‘The Wind’ is in the classic mould of an Americana troubadour album – it’s up there with the best, alongside Guy Clark, Tom Rush, and Townes Van Zandt.
Based in Calgary and dubbed the “Laureate of the Lonesome Song”, The Wind is Zachary Lucky’s latest album. The songs explore unexpected journeys and how we’re blown with the wind, characters at crossroads grappling with the unpredictable twists of fate and themes of change, love, and life in motion.
Musically stripped down to guitar and dobro, it opens with the meditative brief titular guitar instrumental before heading into the fingerpicked Hundred Miles From Nowhere, where he declares he’s “always been better/At living on the road”, a travelling musician’s lament about “gas station coffee/Waking up alone …singing in a barroom North Ontario wonderin’/What the hell’s this for/Singing for the tip jar/It’s never much you know” as “All the miles they add up fast/All my bills they do too/And I wonder what’ll be left/When I get on home to you”.
Two songs are just first name titled story sketches; Jasper is a dobro and strummed guitar honky tonk waltzer with dusty growl Kristofferson DNA in its narrative (“I saw her sitting there across the barroom/In my eyes she stared and I saw her pain… Well I sat down right beside her I got a double gin and a Shiner Bock/Her silence it said everything… Then I heard her say, “they always leave me/Those prairie boys they’re like the wind/They come around then they’re gone”/ And I wonder will she love again”). The other is the cowboy country waltzing swayalong John, the story of a snowplough driver and a teenage romance that led to marriage and having a child on Christmas Eve before having to immediately go out clearing the highways, a job that, while winters may not be as harsh, still keeps him away from home (“So I guess I’ll keep a rollin’ through the thick of this storm/Keep my blade to the ground and my radio on…I’ll keep this plow a runnin’/I’ll keep it pointed straight/If all goes well I’ll be home Christmas day”).
That running theme of being separated is also to the fore in the fingerpicked ache of Do You Still Miss Me (When You’re Stoned) (“Well It’s sure been a long time/Since I’ve been home…I didn’t mean to go/Leaving comes easy/To someone like me /It’s not that I want to/Just comes naturally”), with wistful regret seeping through the lines “Sometimes I wonder/If I could go back home/Would you still be waiting/There by the phone /And do you still miss me/Whenever you get stoned”. The same holds true of the Gordon Lightfoot-shaded Ramblin’ Kind (“I’ve been chasing your trail so long/Since I was just a kid/I’ve been running in circles/I’ve been spinning my tires…they say the grass is greener/On the other side/I’ve been over that hill and back/A couple of times/Paint me a picture Just give me a sign/Always been more of the ramblin’ kind”), the road promising freedom and “a little peace of mind”.
Having traversed Highway 22, the album hits route number 67 for Water In The Fuel, which, of a similar mien to Springsteen’s Nebraska, uses a truck on its last legs (“The light keeps coming on/I got water in the fuel/My brakes are gone/Got a left front tire throwing thread”) as a metaphor for a life and a relationship falling apart (“You said you couldn’t stay with a man who was always gone away/All you wanted to do was to settle down/You wanted to buy that little trailer out on the edge with the money you saved / t had a carport – a colour tv no place to turn around …Your voice last night on the telephone/Said you wouldn’t be there when I got home”).
The longest track, just shy of five and a half minutes, the ineffably sad Wild Rose County follows another wandering and lonely singer, stuck where “The working days are all so long/You work until the sun sets/And wake up with the next dawn /I’m just trying to get by/With this old guitar and songs”, with “no way to get home” and their relationship in the balance (“I heard your voice on the phone/You were saying you missed me/And you’re tired of being alone”).
It finds a companion piece in the Tom Rush-like, mandolin-laced Wrong Side Of Town, the singer trapped “between a rock and a hard place”, seeing “the lights of the city/From the wrong side of town/Where the hookers and the junkies/They like to hang around”, with thoughts of what might have been (“Wondering what would have happened /If I turned away/Would those bills pile up/While the rain poured down”) and of the days when the promise seemed so bright “I’m thinking of a time/I was so free/I would drive for miles and miles”.
Now, all those years down the road, he wistfully reflects, “I don’t sing like I used to/Don’t get out much anymore/Found a little quiet town/And I sold off my ford/I still think of those loved ones/In the prairies way out west/Wonder if they know I miss them/That those years were the best”.
It ends with a sparsely strummed, slow, waltzing vocal reprise of the title track and a final sigh of regrets at decisions made and paths taken as he sings, “I can see the sun a settin’/Across that fertile plain/It’s saying my son where have you gone/Why did you go astray/Well it’s not that I ever wanted to/I swear I wanted to stay/But that wind blew heavy/And that wind blew cold/That wind it blew me away”.
In the classic mould of an Americana troubadour album – it’s up there with the best, alongside Guy Clark, Tom Rush, and Townes Van Zandt.
The Wind (1st November 2024) Wroxton Recordings.
Order via Bandcamp: https://zacharylucky.bandcamp.com/album/the-wind
