{"id":1460,"date":"2017-01-04T05:30:51","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T10:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/?p=1460"},"modified":"2017-01-03T22:28:48","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T03:28:48","slug":"what-i-missed-in-2016-roger-hoover-returns-with-pastures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2017\/01\/04\/what-i-missed-in-2016-roger-hoover-returns-with-pastures\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Missed In 2016: Roger Hoover Returns with Pastures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since I launched this blog in March, I have tried to write about as many wonderful things as I can, in essays, the podcast, and every Friday in the New Release Roundup. Try as I might, I can\u2019t write about all the good stuff coming out. This will be my annual attempt to correct that. For the next ten days, I\u2019ll be highlighting albums I missed in 2016. To cast an even wider net, I\u2019ve enlisted some talented friends to write about some of their favorites this year. You can read that here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Roger Hoover<\/a> – Pastures<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n

I have a great memory of the only time I\u2019ve been able to see Roger Hoover live. The Ohio denizen was playing a club in Boston I\u2019d never heard of, and I was a bit late in getting there. The venue was in the shadow of what is now the TD Garden, and I could hear Hoover a couple of blocks away, his voice blasting through the open front door and bouncing off the arena behind me. It was a beacon to find the place, and a spine-tingling moment. I had been sent Panic Blues, his second album as Roger Hoover and the Whiskeyhounds, the year before in 2005 and loved its passionate, CCR-like sound (though I believe Hoover would say he didn\u2019t feel the CCR influence as a performer quite like I felt it as a listener). At the time, Hoover was still working on another batch of well-crafted, energizing Americana that would become Jukebox Manifesto. Unfortunately, I lost track of Hoover for a bit after that album and have some catching up to do with his work fronting The Magpies and The Hurt. But I was thrilled to see his Kickstarter for Pastures pop up in 2015, and even happier when I got my copy in the mail. <\/p>\n

Hoover still has that voice, a compelling instrument to bring home his stick-to-your-ribs songwriting. It\u2019s appropriate that Hoover quotes poet Gary Snyder\u2019s \u201cHay for the Horses\u201d in the album credits. The poet describes a sixty-eight-year-old man who, after delivering and stacking a loft full of hay, remarks to a helper, \u201cI thought, that day I started\/I sure would hate to do this all my life\/And dammit, that\u2019s just what\/I\u2019ve gone and done.\u201d These are songs of love and work, sung by narrators scratching and clawing to find some satisfaction. Like Snyder\u2019s delivery man, they are watching their lives go by, knowing they have to find what they need in what they\u2019re given. In a hard day\u2019s work, or a good day of fishing. \u201cThe money took some getting\/The sweat was worth its weight in gold,\u201d he sings on \u201cGive What You Get Back.\u201d Just staying alive is a Sisyphus-like venture, so it\u2019s a touch ironic that that\u2019s a recurring theme, made plainest in \u201cSt. John,\u201d in which Hoover sings, \u201cSometimes you have to be alone\/Sometimes you have to roll the stone\/Back to the top of the hill again\/And watch it roll back down again.\u201d It\u2019s a working-class sound, too \u2013 twangy, slightly overdriven guitars, organ with Leslie speakers swirling. Hoover quoted another icon \u2013 Pete Seeger \u2013 in his Kickstarter campaign<\/a>, who asked, \u201cOnce upon a time, wasn’t singing a part of everyday life as much as talking, physical exercise, and religion?\u201d That was Hoover\u2019s goal, to put songs out into the world that people could sing in their everyday lives. And that\u2019s what he\u2019s done. <\/p>\n