Big Ditch Road: It’s just that simple

Alternative country in the 21st century is an increasingly tricky endeavor. How can anyone earnestly sing about swinging screen doors and cleaning their tractor when you and I both know they program their TiVo and check their e-mail at night just like the rest of us techno-dependent humanoids? It takes a particularly talented and genuine outfit to be believable in the cowboy hat and flannel trade these days—a group like Big Ditch Road.

Local newcomers who’ve only been on the scene for a short while, BDR (Darin Wald-vocals/guitar; Brian O’Neil-pedal steel; Blake Erdahl–guitar; Peter Sands-bass; David Downey-drums; Lisa Whipkey-fiddle) have managed to quickly garner a fair amount of attention thanks to the straightforward back porch balladry present on their debut album, Ring (Eclectone records).

An immediately accessible and familiar sounding record, Ring isn’t the kind of album that demands attention in a crowded bar (although more rousing moments like the stinging guitar outro to “Waiting for the Fall” do crop up occasionally). It was only when I ended up on a late night drive with Ring as my sole companion that the magic of the album made itself known, its dollops of heartbreaking pedal steel oozing through my car’s tinny sound system and making the enveloping darkness of the night a markedly more intense experience.

The revelation was a surprise to me, but made instant sense to the album’s creator. “I think the record is most effective when people listen to it in isolation because I was isolated when the songs were written,” explains Wald via telephone from his Minneapolis home. “These songs were all generally written between the hours of midnight and five in the morning in the winter. That type of night has a certain feel to it, particularly if you’re alone, and that feeling can end up in the melody and lyrics as well, I think.” Wald’s right, of course, and Ring’s cohesiveness (in tone both sonically and emotionally) is ultimately its greatest strength.

Wald’s low-impact craggy voice (strongly reminiscent of Cary Hudson—former singer in Mississippi’s outstanding roots band Blue Mountain) is the ideal conduit for his tales of woe, singing about women as glimpsed on their way out the door with the kind of precision that can only come with experience. The album’s title isn’t referring to the ring I first thought—the only weddings going down here are far removed from the narrator’s own lives (“Not to Me”). The true meaning of the album’s title is provided by the cover shot: a half-empty whisky glass and a cigarette lying beside a rotary phone that the song’s protagonist can only hope will ring to rouse him out of his drunken late night musings (although we all know it can’t and the album would be ruined if any former or would-be lover got through on the line while Wald was at work).

The contributions of Whipkey and O’Neil are key throughout, providing just the right textures to Wald’s simple back road tunes. Ring comes off like a slightly less polished version of Whiskeytown’s 1997 album Strangers Almanac (the only time in Ryan Adams’ prolific career when the combination of his pop ambition and other people’s bad production sensibilities didn’t derail his obviously superior song-writing talent).

Big Ditch Road may not have the technical chops of their flashier brethren, but technical proficiency isn’t high on Wald’s list of priorities. “I think the weather has a lot to do with the feel of the music, not so much really even with us, just generally groups from the Midwest,” explains Wald. “I think it’s different if you come from somewhere else, I know people from the South who grew up with a guitar in their hand. I don’t think that’s really the case around here, I know it wasn’t for me. Our band might not be as musically adept as, say, bluegrass players, but I don’t think it matters; we connect more based on emotions and just trying to put feeling into the music. You can be a great band and be hot players, or you can be a great band that knows how to get their point and emotions across even if they aren’t the most musically talented players. I think that’s always been a strong point of music from here.”