By Lester Glass
Should you happen to see an upright string bass being toted around Music City, chances are it belongs to a symphonic player, a jazz musician or a bluegrass plucker. Somewhere in the chasm between those stylistically exclusive camps falls country-and-classic rock ’n’ roll bassist Mark W. Winchester, whose credits include Emmylou Harris’ Nash Ramblers and retro-rooted Stray Cats co-founder Brian Setzer. The latter role is a natural for Winchester, a guitar picker whose yen to form a college rockabilly band finally prompted him to take on the stand-up bass chores that few others at the University of South Carolina were willing to handle. It would later lead the self-taught bassist to his first notable Nashville gig in the late 1980s, slapping the big fiddle with The Planet Rockers, who would go on to become international cult heroes.
Winchester’s original music testifies to his portfolio of pub-rock/punk/new-wave, country and 1950s-era rock/R&B influences, all of which collide quirkily on his second full-length solo outing, Upright. Joining Winchester are drummer Jimmy Lester (Los Straitjackets, Billy Joe Shaver) and guitarist Kenny Vaughan (on loan from Marty Stuart’s Fabulous Superlatives), who comprise a rough-and-ready trio that brings the heat to performances as unselfconscious, stripped-down and immediate as you’re likely to hear in these digital days, when layers of post-production polish are the norm. Recorded mostly live with minimal overdubs over a couple of days at Madison studio Tone Chapparal, Upright stands tall on the strength of well-crafted songs supported by savvy musicians who don’t overthink the process.
Offbeat humor flavors several standout tracks, undercutting romantic paranoia on the revved-up “Givin’ Me the Nervous” and coaxing a chuckle from a nightmare nuptial scenario in “The Bride Is Hot”: The bride is hot / I know it’s true / Don’t tie the knot / She loves the best man too. Both numbers suggest the tongue-in-cheekery of ’80s-era Nick Lowe, whose influence also shows up on the tender blue-eyed soul of “Absotively Posilutely,” featuring one of Winchester’s strongest vocal turns. His plainspoken, likeable singing voice gets the job done with unrestrained Southeastern accent intact, especially on his more idiosyncratic songs, though his liltingly beautiful country waltz, “Part of Me,” deserves a classic set of pipes of the Jim Reeves/Patsy Cline caliber. Winchester’s unfussy take on his self-penned “Would I” lacks the baritone ballast of Randy Travis’ 1996 hit recording but boasts a rawer and more robust delivery, and rings with comparable charm.
The romantic and wackabilly factors on Upright are offset by some darker themes: the intriguing “Two White Dogs” is half canine ghost story and half would-be robbery song, while leather-clad malevolence seethes beneath the unsettling, minor-key “Mousetrap,” punctuated with a sharp, staccato rhythm. While such cuts contribute variety, the album’s overall effect is ultimately upbeat. If there’s an overarching statement to be found here, “Remember Rock-n-Roll?” would have to be it. A mash-up of Buddy Holly and Ramones, the song earnestly poses its titular question while its writer’s unexpectedly resistant response─“I don’t”─seemingly dismisses the notion of youthful nostalgia; to Winchester, rock ’n’ roll isn’t something to wistfully reminisce about in one’s older years, it’s a vital means of retaining agelessness. Anyone needing a nudge in this direction may find in Winchester’s loose-limbed Upright a reason to stand up and shout.
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(A version of this review was originally published on the Sports and Entertainment Nashville website, which is no longer active.)
