Julian Dawson with Gene Parsons, Hillbilly Zen (String Bender, 2002)

Hillbilly Zen is British songwriter Julian Dawson's fifteenth album; GMR has also reviewed Spark (1999) and Under the Sun (1999). Aside from singing solo, Dawson is likely best known for his membership in the band Plainsong with Iain Matthews, and hence he is a fringe member of the Fairport Convention Mafia.

One of the two paths Hillbilly Zen takes is "hillbilly." Dawson explains, "This album is my chance to say 'thank you' [to American music] with some of those musical styles. So here you'll find bluegrass, country music, soul ballads, blues and even rockabilly." The songs have been cowritten with American musical colleagues and friends, writers that Dawson admires. The second path is "zen." Two streams of thought run through the album like rivers and bind the compositions. One is the backwaters of lost romance. The other is the peaceful delta of inspirational philosophy, one that anthropomorphically believes that contentment is possible, things will get better, and that we should accept what we cannot change.

Playing second fiddle on the title is ex-Byrd Gene Parsons, who "plays almost all the instruments," most notably pedal steel. On Hillbilly Zen Parsons manages to make the accompaniment of the songs both "tasteful," and creatively interesting! Dawson has based most of the songs on the American Nashville-Muscle Shoals popular-roots tradition that he loves. Parson softens the model with a back-porch acoustic approach. Finally, on many of the tracks, Dawson's British vocal and musical accent is obvious. Voila!

Though the co-writers and genres change, the writing is similar throughout. Some could be conceived as stories but they are still abstract, with the details and proper nouns smoothed out. Here are a few lines from a song that he wrote with R&B musician Essra Mohawk:

Take one more look behind you
At all that brought you here
Then let it go and turn around
And watch your dreams appear

These ungrounded lyrics can easily boost and cheer a listener with their wise optimistic universality. On the other hand, if something else is happening (for instance a giant logging truck weaving in the righthand lane) the soft focus and lack of detail could be hard to hold on to.

To me, the love songs seem diaphanous, so I've taken the instrument and philosophy songs as my own choices. "Banjo Song" is one of the few songs written solo, spirited in from his early twenties, "the oldest I've ever recorded." From the age of four, he'd been a wicked child, until he got his hands on a banjo! Not surprisingly, Parsons plays banjo on this one. Dawson also sings about harmonicas.

When you changed my life
I was still knee high
I knew it the second that you kissed my lips...

"Don't Just Do Something (Sit There Son)," alternatively titled "Hillbilly Zen" and hence the title track, is co-written with Nashville writer Susan Longacre and backed by a country-blues arrangement. Imagine an old man on the front porch.

Forget the race,
let the river run
What's coming's coming,
what's done is done

And have a drink! A light country-pop song, "Loser's Blues" suggests that we "get back on the track again." Good idea.

The album is positively inspirational, Julian Dawson's voice is pleasant and low-key and Gene Parson's instrumentals are quiet yet wonderful. Recommended for folks who like good singer-songwriters with solid, integrated low-key country-folk arrangements, and for devotees of British folk-rock...you might here these songs at Cropredy sometime and be tested on them!