Sunday 29 June 2008, Tom Waits, Knoxville TN. 

I simply have nothing to aspire to, concertwise, for the rest of my life.  It was the show of a lifetime.

By Steve Wildsmith
of The Daily Times Staff
steve.wildsmith@thedailytimes.com

http://www.thedailytimes.com/article/20080229/ENT/224468534

Like a disheveled, wild-eyed hermit who calls a cave high up in the Smokies home, Malcolm
Holcombe has emerged once again to impart some musical wisdom to the masses.

This time, it's in the form of his new album - "Gamblin' House," a record that showcases
his signature style: growling, hissing, hollering and singing with a voice that lovers of
Bob Dylan would swoon over and guitar-playing that alternates between a murderous
choke-hold on the neck and a lover's caress of the strings.

This time around, Holcombe teamed up with noted producer Ray Kennedy (who, with fellow
Americana maverick Steve Earle, once made up a production team known as the Twangtrust).
With Kennedy's help, Holcombe fills out the record with light touches of percussion,
banjo and more.

It's one thing to describe the record, however, and it's another thing entirely to ask
Holcombe to describe the process. He's a product of his environment - the mountains of
Western North Carolina - and a conversation with him is filled with off-the-wall
analogies, cryptic metaphors and a language that's as foreign as it can be meandering.

"I wanted to work with Ray - I've been biting at the bit to get in the saddle with him
for a long time," Holcombe told The Daily Times this week. "I got a whiff of the pot
boiling over there at Echo Mountain (Studios), and I just went over there and we thought
we'd just jump in the pot, you know? Just jump in and turn it up to a nice hot boil. We
picked a couple of bones off the side of the road, put 'em in our noses and starting
whooping and hollering in the pot. We had a lot of fun.

"It was humbling and real spark-ified, you know? He's just a very creative killdare. He
let me go ahead and hold the bobby pin, and we just went ahead and put it in the wall
socket, so we was able to share the jitters. I was very grateful to be able to
collaborate with him. Even though he was a producer, I appreciate him lending an ear to
some of the ideas that came up, and once that pot was a boiling, he helped me stir it up
a little bit, chop up some meat and vegetables and, hopefully, make it a little palatable
to the folks who lend an ear."

For those scratching their heads or re-reading the preceding paragraphs, know this -
that's just Holcombe. As he sings on the title track of "Gamblin' House," he's got his
own set of problems and his own kind of rules.

Born in Asheville, N.C., and raised in nearby Weaverville, Holcombe learned to play the
flat-top guitar and joined up with a folk group called The Hilltoppers. Playing fairs,
dances and shows throughout the small town of Weaverville and thereabouts, he fed his
spirit a steady diet of folk, traditional Appalachian ballads and bluegrass.

In 1976, he drifted to Florida and, in 1990, Nashville, where he worked odd jobs and
soaked up as much of the business side of the industry as possible before going back to
North Carolina. He's cut several albums over the years, including one for Geffen, "A
Hundred Lies," that earned a four-star review from Rolling Stone. He's been compared to
Bruce Springsteen for the way he paints vivid portraits with his songs, turning them into
haunting, brooding, moving affairs. There's an ache of loveliness and loneliness, of
torment and hope, threaded through each of his songs. It's the groan of weathered timber
from an abandoned mountain cabin during a spring storm, the lonesome bark of a coyote on
the other side of a ridge or the whine of a locomotive cutting through Appalachian
valleys in the dark of night.

It's not easy, listening to his songs - there's no clear message, no distinct narrative,
that makes a Malcolm Holcombe song easy to follow. Likewise, his performances can be
spiritual exorcisms - intense excoriations of the demons that haunt Holcombe's soul. The
payoff, however, is in listening and watching with care. One song's meaning ("Cynthia
Margaret," for example, about his wife) will dawn clear as a new day, and the furious
darkness of groans and foot-stomping and violent guitar strokes will give way to a
languid, fluid style that transforms him into the kindly old man holding court on the
porch of the corner store.

"I didn't come up with the ideas for this record by eatin' too much ice cream," he said.
"The theme just kind of made itself. A lot of it's about politics, about a country in
trouble. Our country's been in trouble for years and years, in my opinion, with this
administration, and I think that it's as plain as the nose on the American people's
faces. It's time to shake up the White House, and I'm voting for Obama."

Suddenly, the homespun homilies and the quaint sayings seem to vanish. There's a serious
tone as he discusses the wave of change he feels is sweeping the nation, and he goes off
on a tirade against President Bush. He speaks of his experiences touring Europe, and how
Bush's shadow falls on the face of every American. He speaks of his past and his future,
and of the evolution - of man, of the land, of his music.

And suddenly, just a quickly as he began, he falls back into that guarded, affable
personality that can be mistaken by the untrained eye as that of a backwoods bumpkin with
a guitar. Holcombe, however, is anything but - although it doesn't bother him if that's
what you think.

"We just had a lot of fun with this record," he said. "I think we were trying to go for
just as raw and back-porch pickin' as we could, to just come up with something that's
real and raw and right in your face.

"I think it sounds like a pretty good record for a crazy man. It's all that reverb, I
reckon."