Most people make incredible demands on artists. They do it, for the most part, because they make few demands on themselves. They wish that artists live as they should; they want them to uncover beautiful, mysterious things for them, and they expect that the work flow uninterrupted.
At the same time, most people show little interest in what challenges an artist faces in their day-to-day lives. They expect magic, so they imagine that there’s nothing ordinary. They think that artists are in touch with something divine, and so don’t want to know about all the times spent worrying about human issues.
Dewey Kincade is an artist who’s made the ordinary his friend and integrated it into music made with the purpose of contributing to the sacred nature of songwriting. The album “The Dark Ages” was written and recorded under strain, and when it might have been easier to give up.
Kincade, however, believes that artists need to create regardless of hardships. It’s a sentence that the singer lives out. The album’s opening track, the funk and soul-inspired “Tied to the Rhythm,” makes Kincade and his backing band, The Navigators, sound like pissed off prophets who’ve returned from the desert only to find a shopping mall built on what should’ve been paradise.
“The truth gets kicked around,” Kincade sings on “Down in the Valley Again.” And if the singer sounds resentful, it’s because he’s not willing to hide it. This wasn’t the ride that was promised. These weren’t the hardships advertised in the job description for “Rock Musician.”
But even at its most bitter, the album has a warmth about it, a sense of romance. The good times are being erased, and it’s up to someone to draw them back up from memory. “Shit Piles Up” sounds like Warren Zevon fronting a bluesy, alt-rock band, and “Pissed It All Away,” with its pristine melodies, could be a long-lost, labelled “Unreleasable” Bob Dylan demo.
Where does it leave us? If you’re on Kincade’s side, putting up our dukes and swinging for our lives. That’s what the songwriter’s doing anyway. There’s no hiding from the fact that “The Dark Ages” is an ambitious 20-song collection of roots rock material. And, there’s no denying that Kincade & The Navigators have put this together, even when it must’ve felt like it was easier to give up on the world than to meet it halfway.
