John
Thill is a modern aged folk hero. I don’t
mean “folk” in the sense of music, but rather because he is like Paul Bunyan or
Davy Crockett. (Full Disclosure: When I
was a child, I thought Davy Crockett was fictional) Thill has been around for long enough that you
should know him by now, but you might not.
“Water
Wars” is actually my first listening to of John Thill. His name makes the rounds in the cassette
label circles, as he’s had releases on Bridgetown Records, Unread Records and
Folktale Records. He’s that sort of
character who I knew existed, knew had music out there on cassette (and not
just one cassette either), yet just hadn’t heard him for some reason.
There
are more names out there than I’d care to admit that fit this pattern, but all in
due time I will listen to them.
The
music of John Thill begins like Tom Petty, then shifts into John Cougar
Mellencamp. It works out well on
cassette for two reasons, one of those being because JCM was mostly made
available to me as a kid via cassettes.
The other is that my uncle had a lot of Tom Petty tapes when I was
growing up, and I always thought that was cool.
In
fact, one day I wouldn’t mind going back and buying all of those old Tom Petty
albums on cassette.
While
there is the folk quality of, say, Bob Dylan, these songs do become electric
still on Side B, and at some point I’m even saying that they’re bringing out a
little bit of Frampton, but overall they are simply top notch. And
though he may name drop Jimmy Buffet, he doesn’t really have any of that sound
coming out that I can hear, thankfully.
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