“Un-American Gothic”
Debut solo album released February 4th on Cooking Vinyl
“Un-American Gothic” is John Wheeler’s first solo record, written entirely on the road during 2011. Best known for the past decade as the creator and frontman of the internationally-successful Rockgrass act, Hayseed Dixie, John spent nearly 9 months on the road in 2011 with Hayseed, traveling every mile of the tour by himself on a motorbike. Prior to the tour, the band had mutually decided that after over 1,000 live shows together they all really wanted – and really needed – to take a couple of years off from Hayseed and each do some different things. For John, this was a welcome opportunity to, in his words, not to have to “just write songs about drinking, cheating, killing and hell for my character, Barley Scotch, to sing anymore – but then having to ask myself, well, what do I want to write about then?”
This didn’t remain a question for long, as John wrote “Wondering Why I Ever Go Home” and “Doomsday Dance” a few days later and those 2 songs set the initial model for the record: John would write whatever came out without thinking about it too much, from his own point of view rather than from the perspective of a character. And that’s what the album is: a collection of songs from a 42-year-old man surprised to make his own acquaintance after having spent his entire adult life motorbiking around the Western World, playing music in a different city every night and spending his evenings talking everything from rock and roll to the local economy. The latter might just be John’s preferred topic of the two, too – there always was more to ol’ Barley Scotch than met the eye, and this album is full to the brim with the proof of it.
“Un-American Gothic” itself is meant to be an ironic title, in that John is now an ex-pat Amercian living in Cambridge with an English wife and bringing up two children who speak with accents very different from his own – ultimately, the title is a reflection of how being physically displaced makes a person question their own identity, as well as the meaning of identity itself, on the deepest levels.
The album is eclectic and individual, like Hayseed Dixie’s critically refreshing seventh album, No Covers (for which Wheeler was chief songwriter), but with broader scope, personality, intelligence and insight. From the first single, “Deeper In Debt”, inspired by a backstage conversation with Fairport Convention’s Dave Pegg and Seasick Steve about the banking crisis, to the stark assessment of the realities of home in “Little Houses in a Row”, to John’s bruised piano-ballad rearrangement of “Eton Rifles”, performed, in disbelief, as a result of hearing that it was David Cameron’s favourite song, this is an album of surprisingly unexpected perspective.
A brave step into his own territory and a chance to write and play entirely on his own terms, this is a record that will unite Hayseed fans of old, but might just open John’s music up a whole new audience too – “Un-American Gothic” is the sound of John Wheeler taking a big, creative sigh of relief.
The first single from the album, “Deeper In Debt”, will be released on November 5th and John Wheeler will be going on a UK tour from November 21 through to December 1.
www.johnwheelermusic.com