I wanted to share a review of Danny Flanigan's new album Evergreen.
Full disclosure: I have played with Danny many times over the years. He’s played with me in The Fellow Travelers and The Navigators, and I’ve shared a stage with a songwriter in the round for many years. He’s a great guy, and if you’re in Louisville and you’ve seen live music, you’ve probably seen him and not even know it. However, I realize that there are people who don’t live here, who should know about Danny’s music.
Within seconds, I recognized “Julia”, the song that opens the album. No, I don’t have a bootleg of Danny playing it. I remember him playing the song several years ago at The Raven. I hadn’t heard the song in years, and yet within seconds I recognized it, because nobody else writes like Danny. His songs are very personal and seem particular to him, but they are also accessible, and there are plenty of moments where I think, “I wish I had written that.” Danny can switch from singing to saying in the song about how Julia was named after the Beatles’ song so effortlessly. It’s like he’s not just singing, but having a conversation with us.
The instrumentation on “Julia” adds to the song- strings, shaker, guitar- but never overwhelms it. The same is true throughout. A little mandolin on “Shine Like You” or the sax on “Love Comes Yous” gives the song flavor, but the song is always front and center. Danny himself displays his own guitar virtuosity on “Little Runner Girl”, but it never feels like showing off. The music is every bit a part of the song as the words.
I dig the bluegrass vibe that pops up throughout the album. “Little Brown Wren” sounds like it was ripped from the American songbook. The song could have been written a century ago, which just demonstrates that Danny is fluent in a number of musical idioms. The decision to follow that song up with a different version of the same song is one that only Danny could pull off. You enjoy the first one so much, it’s okay to repeat it with a chiller vibe. It’s like he tried two versions and was happy with them both.
“Cigarettes and Chardonnay” feels much more contemporary- like it was written yesterday. I loved how this song starts so breezy, and then in the second verse Danny brings up the death of this father. The song- like much of the album- feels very natural. Even a standout line about “trying to unexplode a couple bombs” doesn’t feel forced. It just makes you say, “Well, of course.”
In the middle of “Jonathon Wade” I caught myself thinking: wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a world populated by characters from Danny Flanigan’s music? But it isn’t the portrait that he paints, so much as his own character that comes through in the music. Danny’s music paints a portrait of how we should all be better people. The song exudes humanity, and speaks to our better angels.
The song “Evergreen” is a reminiscing tune, and he creates a place he calls “the evergreen” which like the tree the song starts off about represents a place where our reminiscences live on forever. It’s fitting that the whole album is called Evergreen, since the whole album takes place in this same place- the Evergreen. At 4:16, it’s the epic of the album.
Danny ends the album with “The Boy Whose Arms Ran Away”, which tells the story of a person who talks about playing banjo (or maybe writing a song), only to wake up with no arms. At this point, you can’t imagine this ever happening to Danny, who is a man who has taken every opportunity to not only write great music, but also support the great music of others.