By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

JOHN GORKA – OUT OF THE VALLEY (1994)

It isn’t very often that I go to a concert these days where I don’t know anything about the bands on the bill. Thanks to the Internet, even if I haven’t heard of a band beforehand, I can just hop on the information superhighway and listen to the band in order to familiarize myself before the actual show.

But back in 1994, it was a lot different. So when I went to see Mary Chapin Carpenter in concert at the Wang Center in Boston (Yes, I happen to like some country music!), I had zero idea who the hell the opening act, folk singer John Gorka, was at the time.
But boy that changed pretty quickly. In his opening set, he was quick witted with his humorous storytelling and I kid you not, his songs really struck a chord with me. At the time, he was touring in support of his fifth studio album, Out of the Valley, and while he played songs from other albums he’d done (the song “I’m From New Jersey” was particularly great AND funny), I ran out to buy the Out of the Valley album as soon as I could after the show. And to this day, I still own that same cassette.

I know that the majority of the articles in my series The Cassette Chronicles revolve around hard rock and heavy metal, but I do like to mix it up a bit sometimes and write about other styles of music I like.
I like stories and when singer-songwriters craft songs that tell great stories, that makes me sit up and take notice. When I first heard the Out of the Valley album, I was hooked and that set me off on a three decades-long fandom for John Gorka’s work. I went back and got the albums that came beforehand and ever since 1994 I’ve bought each of his albums since. And I’ve always been vastly entertained and impressed with Gorka’s work on those albums.

But let’s now shift the focus to the Out of the Valley album itself, shall we?

The first side of the cassette opens with the song “Good Noise” and for some strange reason, I never realized there was actually a video made for the song at the time of the album’s release. That oversight was corrected through researching for this article. While I saw John Gorka performing as a solo performer, the video for the song has him fronting a full band.

One of the things I liked right away was Gorka’s deep voice and his facility with language in his lyrics. It reminds me of the same kind of ability that Warren Zevon demonstrated so adeptly in his work.

The song has an uptempo beat to it that his further enhanced by the use of both backing and “testifying” vocals (I’m not exactly sure what that term means) from singer Jonnell Mosser. I was reading about the whole album online and it was noted that this song (and the majority of the album’s material) is a lot more optimistic sounding than Gorka’s previous albums. I don’t know how that went over with his already established fanbase but I’ve never had any divided feelings about any of the style choices in his music myself.

I mentioned singer Jonnell Mosser, but the album is packed with a ton of guest performers who are both big names (Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kathy Mattea) or prolific musical contributors like keyboardist Matt Rollings (whose worked with a varied list of artists like Dolly Parton, Blues Traveler and Queensryche, to name just a few). You should check out the liner notes for the full list of all the contributors, it is pretty impressive.

The album was produced by John Jennings who was a longtime collaborator with Mary Chapin Carpenter. He also played on a number of the tracks on this album.

I should note that John Gorka wrote all of the songs on this album, sharing just a single co-write on the song “Mystery To Me”.

The second song on Side One is called “That’s Why”. It’s never explicitly stated in the song but the lyrics clearly show that it is a song about Elvis Presley. The song is deliberately slower where the focus is mainly on Gorka’s voice and the guitar playing which features Leo Kottke on lead guitar and Gorka on the acoustic. It also has a great backing vocal from country music legend Kathy Mattea.

I remember the first time I heard the song “Carnival Knowledge (Second Hand Face)” and being just blown away by the story as it unfolded in the song. It’s got a sad overtone but with a bit of hope thrown in about a circus clown and it has always left me wanting to know what happens “next” after the song ends.

For “Talk About Love”, you get a return to the more uptempo driving beat to Gorka’s music. The drums come from Fairport Convention drummer Dave Mattacks. It’s a great little love song that isn’t syrupy or overly sweet. I loved the guitar solo in the song and the verse that goes like this:

“You know that bees they go for honey
And the grapes they go for wine
I did too until I tasted you
And then I nearly lost my mind”

And that’s just one of the great pieces of lyrical content in the song. It’s a love song I can actually stand behind as one that was great when I heard it that first time and still holds up 30 plus years later.

The song “Bigtime Lonesome” features just a guitar and bass musical score behind John Gorka’s vocals. It’s the longest track on the album at five-and-a-half minutes. And in direct contrast to the subject of “Talk About Love”, this song deals with the aftermath of a love that’s ended. It’s quite the tonal shift between the two songs but for some reason, I dig this track (for different reasons) as much as “Talk About Love”.

The track “Furniture” is billed (on the album’s Wikipedia page) as being a song about “critical self-examination without self-pity”. I don’t know that I ever got that deep into the meaning behind the song myself. There’s a moody vibe to the musical score which I found incredibly intriguing. The first lines of the song are incredible, “What good am I / If I leave you lonely / What good am I / If I’m lonely too” and further serve to draw me into the track. Kathy Mattea makes a second backing vocal appearance with this song and her work provides further depth to the vocals. As I listened to the song for this article, I realized that I never really got what Gorka was singing about until just now. I loved the song but now that I have an idea of what was behind the song’s creation, it gives me a renewed appreciation for the song.

The first side of the album closes out with the song “Mystery To Me” and it is a nice showcase for yet more of Gorka’s brilliant lyricism and some fantastic humor woven into those words. One thing I noticed about the liner notes is that the tambourine that is used in the song is credited to “Mystery Man”. As a confirmed lover of mysteries, now I want to know who that actually is.

As for the actual song itself, there’s just a killer set of lyrics as Gorka wonders just what attracts people to each other, particularly when they are such opposites. The humor in the lyrics is both overt and subtle at times throughout the song. I particularly enjoyed the flow of this lyrical stanza but the whole song is pretty damn funny.

“Maybe she’s a saint who took some pity on your soul
She had too much compassion then just went out of control
Now you’re walking hand in hand, I would have said no way
I do believe in miracles, ’cause I’ve seen one today”

When you flip the cassette over for Side Two of the album, you get the album’s title track which comes from Gorka’s life when he lived in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. It is a more methodically paced song as he ruminates about life in the valley combined with the desire to leave and how it both happens and doesn’t happen for people.

“I went off in the cruel world / like a gun in a crowded room” is the first line in the song “Thoughtless Behavior”. It is a pretty stark opening line and it captures your attention for sure. The song is interesting for its use of just guitar and bass for the music. The pacing isn’t quite as slow as the “Out of the Valley” song but it doesn’t burst out of your speakers either. Again, when you combine Gorka’s vocals with the words he’s written, you get magic. I also liked the way the backing vocals from John Jennings were used in the song.

The song “Always Going Home” really struck a chord with me when I first heard it. While it is kind of serious in nature, the song gets lightened up from being overly dramatic with the way Gorka constructs the lyrics. I don’t know if it was appropriate or not, but there were a couple of times in the song where I kind of chuckled at the lyrical wordplay. Part of what drew me to this song was not just the sheer quality of the track, but the fact that I knew a couple of people I knew at the time the album came out who could conceivably fit the narrative description of the song lyrics. This is not just a favorite track from the album, but one of my favorite John Gorka tracks, period. I loved the instrumentation on the song and how the uptempo pacing gives you a bit of breathlessness as the lyrics come firing out.

If you want a great example of lyrical imagination being responsible for crafting a great story song, check out the song “Flying Red Horse”. In the song, Gorka imagines the winged red horse logo from the Mobil gas station jumping off the sign and flying to the sky. What makes the song especially appealing is how he takes what would be a kind of silly concept and delivers it with such sincerity that you find yourself believing it might actually be possible. At the same time, there are some lyrics that reflect Gorka’s subtle sense of humor as well. The song also features one of two guest vocal appearances from Mary Chapin Carpenter, who I remain a big fan of to this day.

The Out of the Valley album closes out with the song “Up Until Then”. It’s a rocking tour-de-force from John Gorka. Hell, even the extended song outro is amazing all by itself. A tale of a woman constantly done wrong and what happens when she finally has had enough of being treated badly. This is another absolutely stunning track and another of my all-time favorites from John Gorka. Seriously, you should check this one out yourself because it is just purely awesome.

I went into a concert in 1994 with no idea who John Gorka was. And I came out with a new fandom that has stretched over the course of more than three decades. And it was cemented by the sheer musical mastery of his Out of the Valley album, which remains a favorite of album of mine, regardless of musical genre.

You might be wondering why I chose to write about the album here and now and there’s a small story behind that. As I mentioned, I first “discovered” John Gorka in 1994. And yet other than that one time I saw him live, I’ve never been able to see him in concert again. This despite having numerous chances to do so. It’s been a case of not being able to go due to work schedules sometimes combined with the laziness of not wanting to drive a long distance to where some shows have been.

But that’s changing this summer. Because John Gorka is going to be playing a show in Harwich, MA at a concert series called Cranfest in the Courtyard. And guess who got a ticket? Yep, it is me! And while I don’t usually get super excited about the prospect of going to a concert, I have to say that I’m quite looking forward to seeing John Gorka again. Time has passed, he’s gone from dark hair to plenty of silvery gray hair, and of course, I’ve gotten fat. But the power of his music and my love of it will finally be in the same place once again come late August. I definitely can’t wait!

NOTES OF INTEREST: According to the album’s Wikipedia page, the Out of the Valley album is the only one that ever appeared on any Billboard chart, reaching #26 on their “Heatseekers” chart. The album was the first of Gorka’s to be recorded outside of the Northeast U.S., being done in Nashville, TN.

The song “Good Noise” was covered by Scottish folk group The John Wright Band in 2001 for their album Language of the Heart.