Fur Dixon and Steve Werner CD Review June 2006

Folkworks Magazine

BY LARRY WINES


With lively melodies, marvelous harmonies, great hooks, downhome sensibilities and deft playing of their six strings, Fur Dixon and Steve Werner are a hot act. They bring high-energy old-time style with modern lyrical sensibilities and a lively bluegrass feel.

Their CD is titled, The Pearl and the Swine. It strings together luminous examples of the former and none of the latter.

The album features some of the duo's accomplished musician pals who are just as likely to be playing some honky-tonk with them. Paul Marshall, from the band, I See Hawks In L.A. (and way back when, the Strawberry Alarm Clock) plays bass and autoharp. Cliff Wagner, of Cliff Wagner and the Old Number 7, contributes banjo and fiddle, while John "Groover" McDuffie is aboard on pedal steel. Mike Stinson, one of L.A.s most successful alt-country songwriters, plays drums, and Scarlet Rivera, whos performed with Bob Dylan, contributes her fiddle on the catchy Back Roads and Blue Skies, a Fur and Steve co-write.

But co-writes are the exception. Fur and Steve are both formidable songwriters, and they balance their gigs with an equal number of originals by each. They keep track, and they let you know it.

Fur and Steve launched as a pairing in 2003. Before that, each had piled-up plenty of credits. He opened for Bob Dylan. She toured with Rosie Flores.

He's been bandleader for still-at-it 50s rockabilly stars, including Glen Glenn, Ray Campi (who still climbs his stand-up bass like Hillary on Everest), Johnny Legend, Sonny Burgess and Tommy Sands. She made her name in the 80s roots/punk scene, with the Hollywood Hillbillies and the Cramps, yet she cites Gillian Welch, June and Mother Maybelle Carter, Hazel Dickens and Johnny Cash as her strongest influences.

She's lived and been part of the music scene in New York and Austin. He made an album called Biker Campfire thats a staple in the road-trip motorcycle world.

Her witty writing includes hilarious prose, like that on their myspace page (www.myspace.com/furandsteve). Hes played Europe and Japan, and had hits across European radio that he penned for expatriate American rocker John Whiteleather, now a resident of Sweden.

As formidable as the two halves, the sum is much greater. Their harmonies are incredible. Someone said, When they sing harmony, it'll raise the hair on your arms. In case youre worried, you can forget Steves biker world. Their songs let you generate the propulsion of your choice, from horseback to shoe leather, or anything with an engine attached. And they make you want to hit the open road to the first off-ramp that becomes a winding back road.

Their pickin' is first rate, and their songs are very California, glimpsing the ocean from Furs Mulholland Highway, crossing the Ventura County Line with her (en-route to who-knows-where) or rolling across the Mojave with Steve's Brother Tumbleweed. Its the spirit of the early surf songs, carefree discovery with one you love or want to, though instrumentally like an old timey string band. It harkens to the early days of The Dirt Band, or today's Old Crow Medicine Show, or acoustic Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers. And its just as much the musical sensibilities of their long list of heroes, including Doc Watson, Ramblin Jack Elliott, Townes Van Zandt, Jimmie Rogers, Willie Nelson, the Yonder Mountain String Band and more.

These two pay attention. They seek and embrace the influences, and theyll tell you things, like Furs reverent observation, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings changed everything in acoustic music. And Steve's, "Back in the real day, folk singing was a hardcore deal. In the '30s and '40s, it was playing in rough bars all across the country, and the guys that came out of that were rough, tough guys."

Lyrically, that homage is present, as in Steve's Reputation of a Rambler (with Cliff Wagner on banjo and Paul Marshall on bass). Steve's song, When My Face Is Covered Over can stand alongside any Appalachian paen to death. His very playful Right On Time, Buddy contrasts nicely with her introspective When Will My Wandering End? and her mea culpa song, If I Wake Up Tomorrow.

But the album's 12 tracks deliver plenty of dance-in-the-aisles, crank-it-up-on-the-open-road kinda music. When Fur melodically asks Where Are We Going? Steve responds with Every Day a Different Journey, occasioning more fine harmonies.

It's all first-rate, and this CD was chosen as a member premium (alongside Kris Kristofferson's new CD) in the Spring 2006 KCSN pledge drive.