 Released 3/5/24 | Cover by Ben Johnson & Tom Flinn |
Madison Red &
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The Big Lonely (and Other Songs from the Plague Years), the third collection of original songs From Madison Red & The Band That Time Forgot, is the band’s most musically diverse collection yet, encompassing most of the band’s most important musical influences. The genres referenced here include sophisticated 1940’s pop (“My Kind of Guy”), 1960’s rock-n-roll (“Chinatown,” “Stealing Home”), 1970’s soul music (“Last Chance”), progressive country (“The Big Lonely”), jazz-inflected blues (“Lamp,” & “Roaches”), and even 1950’s finger-picking folk music (“The Hanging Judge”).
Thematically, this collection toggles between confronting the twin menaces of the Covid era. Several songs target the proximate danger of the Pandemic itself with “Chinatown” denouncing the finger-pointing that led to the targeting of Asian Americans, and “Stealing Home” describing the considerable difficulties in establishing relationships during the plague years, while “Last Chance” and “The Big Lonely” address the slower-moving but inexorable menace of human-caused climate change.
Ironically the most “politically relevant” song in the collection is “My Kind of Guy,” which reflects the musical style of the 1940s with the 32-bar format of the classic American Songbook prefaced by a scene-setting bridge. Though we didn’t necessarily realize it while we were writing it, “My Kind of Guy” is a reaction to the absurd and ceaseless braggadocio of various right-wing buffoons with their golden microphones and gilded toilets, and their constant protestations of how “intelligent” and “great” they are. Whatever happened to that old ideal of American masculinity, the strong silent types portrayed by Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper, and Randolph Scott? How did they get replaced by these gauche, self-congratulating, and weirdly-constrained Babbitts, whose constant blithering boosterism is strictly limited to grotesque and absurd self-aggrandizement.
Megan Levy- vocals, Rhodes, Hammond
Tom Flinn- guitars (1949 Gibson ES-175, Martin D-18), vocals
Ben Johnson- bass, vocals
Al Smithee, Jr.- drums
More from Madison Red & The Band That Time Forgot
 Proletarian Swing |
 21st Century Blues & Ballads |
 Film Noir Songbook Vol. 1 |
 Christmas Confections & Seasonal Oddities |
 Christmas Confections & Seasonal Oddities 2 |