Jordan Chassan

Jordan Chassan "East of Bristol, West of Knoxville" (Liner notes by Grammy nominee Barry Alfonso) Some artists stick to the narrow path; others need to wander the landscape a little. They're not the caged¬in kind. They're more free¬range, you might say. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Jordan Chassan has done some traveling in his time. Over two decades ago, he emerged from Montclair, New Jersey to perform at CBGBs and make his mark on the New York club scene with innovative bands like Stuart's Hammer and the Young Hegelians. In the early 1990s, he came to Nashville in hopes of refining his idiosyncratic folk/country/jazz/pop blend further. From there, his sonic terrain has gone off the map, taking him to a place somewhere East of Bristol, West of Knoxville. You won't locate this spot in your Rand¬McNally. It's a terra incognita of lyric wit and musical inspiration, etched by emotional lights and shadows found nowhere else. Jordan has been on an extended excursion through this region; he's still surprised by what he finds there. East of Bristol, West of Knoxville is a Pilgrim's Progress tour of an American landscape beyond the well¬beaten pop music track. "It's something of a song cycle," Jordan says. "If you listen from beginning to end, the album goes from intoxication to disillusionment and back again. There's a search taking place. The songs reflect years of living and stumbling and getting back up again...there's a lot of scuffed shoes and missing shirt buttons that went into making them, metaphorically speaking." The album's songs roll by vividly, like glimpses of life seen in flashes from a moving train. The woozy delight of "Brandywine" gives way to the bittersweet acceptance of "A Day Like Today"; the hopeful mood of "Things Just Do" shades into the anxious urgings of "Wound Up Way Too Tight"; the homespun wisdom of "Am I Pleasin' You?" is a set-up for the wry spirit of "Hard Work Bein' A Fool." The poignant longing expressed in "That Destination" echoes through the album as a whole - the dream of a finer world is just out of reach, around the bend on a road through some strange country. Jordan is uniquely equipped for this journey. His grand¬uncle was none other than Joe Gould, the Greenwich Village bohemian writer made famous by the New Yorker's Joseph Mitchell. Gould - also known as "Professor Seagull" - was the author of the semi¬legendary "Oral History of the World," a purportedly massive compilation of personal musings and overheard conversations gathered over the decades. ("This album is kind of my own Oral History of the World," Jordan says.) Like his ancestor, Jordan is a nonconformist wrestling with his creative muse, which sometimes spirits him away on seagull¬like wings into uncharted zones. This may account for East of Bristol, West of Knoxville's timeless feel. In some ways, it has the sound of a newly¬discovered relic, like a home recording by some unknown master bought at a garage sale. Largely acoustic, the album has a kind of backyard urbanity; the deceptively simple licks and easy¬flowing grooves are played with sure hands and enraptured heads. The roster of performers here - including vocalists Gillian Welch and Claire Davidson, harmonica player Jellyroll Johnston, drummers Larry Atamanuik and Pat MacInerny, upright bassists Byron House and Dave Jacques, electric bassist Allison Prestwood and steel guitarist Al Goll - is an impressive one. Jordan (on acoustic and electric guitars) brings out the best in these players. The album abounds with small touches of brilliance ¬¬ like the weirdly zestful Baldwin organ on "Wound Up Way Too Tight" - that flash and ripple in unexpected places. Finding musical comparisons isn't easy - the deadpan humor of these songs recalls the best of Roger Miller, while the hipster insights and jazzy undercurrents bring Mose Allison to mind. Really, though, Jordan is very much his own man, a primitive modernist (or modernist primitive) with an unmistakable voice and vision. An album like this one couldn't have been created under normal conditions. Many of its tracks were recording and mixed at the Inglewood SoundBarn, located behind Jordan's home in a secluded Nashville neighborhood lovingly known as the Republic of Ardee. The SoundBarn's vintage equipment and down¬home ambiance gives East of Bristol, West of Knoxville its distinctive feel. "A lot of the recording was seat of the pants," Jordan says. "There's a rough hewn quality to it. I used to look for perfection in the studio - now I look for beautiful flaws..." Happy accidents guided his production hand at key moments: "A lot of times, when I decided on a final mix, it was because the tape ran out just when it was finished. I don't think it was a coincidence - it was the universe telling me, 'that's good enough.'" East of Bristol, West of Knoxville is Jordan Chassan's creative road diary, set down in his own resonant language. Honest and sly, seasoned with the sharp angles left intact, this album grows in richness with each listening. It's the work of a musician who won't be fenced in, who likes to roam the outer regions of his art.