Michelle Malone’s Stompin’ Ground: Gritty Swamp & Stomp, and she ain’t bashful
Hit play on this 2003 release by Moanin’ Michelle Malone and the Low-Down Georgia Revue and yeah, that sound you hear is the heel of a busted up boot stampin’ time on a dusty barn floor.
From front to back, this record sounds for all the world like a Saturday night getting wonderfully out of control in the back of a shed at the end of a long drive near Nowhere, Georgia with all the right instruments in place. And as you wander by under a big black sky, you witness the magic of the human spirit letting it all loose into the microphone, hollerin’ around about life and love; getting stuck; coming undone; and the courage it takes to show up as who you are every day of your life.
Getting snagged up in love in the slide-heavy “Lafayette;” the rocking ramble of “2 Horns and 2 Wings;” the soft-hearted and generous wail of “Moanin’ Coat;” the sweet flirting of “Honeysuckle Lullaby;” the stand up and be counted for who you are encouragement of the album’s gorgeous standout, “True.” Yet again, Michelle Malone has put together a record that is greater than the sum of its parts. And woven in, around, and through it is that thread that puts her out from of so many other talented men and women standing in a tangle of guitar cords and amps: empathy and compassion. She has a habit of being unabashedly human, and making it perfectly ok for the rest of us to be exactly who and what we are, too.
Some might call Stompin’ Ground getting a little ornery; others, well, they call it making music. Thanks for letting it rip on this one, Malone. Disorderly conduct and all.
Audio previews here: http://www.michellemalone.com/audio/stompin-ground/