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Astonishingly, Chris Dingman, the mind
behind the CROOKED ROADS project, came to music-making quite late. Sure, in
his youth he plunked around on Dad’s piano and became enchanted with his
Mom’s BEATLES records, but it was only when he first heard Bob Dylan’s "Freewheelin'"
LP that he felt the desire to write songs arise within himself. At that time
Dingman (born in 1964) was already 21. For the moment he didn’t dare make a
real go at it, though--he was perhaps too humble-–and so he settled instead
on writing screenplays and working for various magazines.
His familiarity with words, quite evident throughout his second album,
"Heartbreak Sampler", seems to come naturally to him. It is no accident that
the name of the band alludes to a quote from the great English lyric poet
William Blake ("Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads,
without improvement, are roads of genius").
Dingman sees his own poetry as self-knowledge and self-purification: "I'm
not interested in telling stories, or trying to write from some other
character's perspective. I write to explore and express my inner life - to
acknowledge wounds and in doing that, to heal them." While this approach is
certainly not new, since many songwriters follow this maxim, in Chris
Dingman’s case it functions so wondrously well that his lyrics and music
achieve a most successful synthesis.
The music on this Crooked Roads album could certainly be filed in the
“Americana Corner”. There you will hear the oft-quoted influences of country
and folk icons like Merle Haggard and Woody Guthrie, but you will also sense
a distinct turn toward songwriters such as Neil Young or Gram Parsons. Just
like his lyrics, Dingman’s music draws life from a certain somberness, a
dusky melancholy; it is shaped by self-doubt and the search for love,
personal fulfillment, and a better, if not entirely unmarred, world.
Dingman has his stories brought to life by a crowd of exquisite (though
unknown to me) musicians, relying mostly on a typical set of country and
folk instruments like the fiddle, mandolin and pedal steel but never acting
too much the purist. Rather, he often lets his love of the Beatles’ pop
aesthetic shine through. One meets a whole slew of pleasing melodies.
"Heartbreak Sampler" comes across as an inspired album, offering the
listener an authentic portrait in sound of an emotionally engaged musician
–
and it thereby strikes the nerve of the roots music fan convincingly and
with absolute authenticity. The album suffers at most only slightly from Dingman’s not-entirely-convincing singing voice, which to me personally
carries too little empathy and too little charisma. Otherwise an appealing
album.
Check prices at CD Baby.
(translated from
the German by Chris Pflueger)
http://www.home-of-rock.de/CD-Reviews/Crooked_Roads/Heartbreak_Sampler.html
Highbias.com
Crooked Roads, a California country band led
by Chris Dingman, claims, "You don't need cowboy boots or a honky-tonk to
feel blue/I got on my tennis shoes now and any street corner will do." This
claim is apparent on the group's most recent album Heartbreak Sampler, which
is Americana music for the white-collar man. While some tunes are a bit too twangy, overall the Bay Town screenwriter-turned-songwriter has released
an
emotionally powerful piece.
by Deirdre Walsh
http://highbias.com/reviews/20060331_short1.html#CrookedRoads
Hanx.net
My admiration for Chris Dingman, the front man
for Crooked Roads, is immense. Because I know that one summer while a young
man he heard Bob Dylan’s Freewheelin’, was touched by R.E.M.’s Murmur and at
the same time read D.H. Lawrence and Nietzsche. But Goddamn it, why do we
barely hear that in his music? Nietzsche, the philosopher with the hammer.
Dingman, the musician with the quill. He grew up in Lyme, a small town in
the New Hampshire countryside. Eventually, he ended up in California, where
he thought of becoming a writer. For the time being nothing has come of that
and we can get to know him as the songwriter of Love, Again and Heartbreak
Sampler. I haven’t heard the first CD. I have already listened to the second
one a lot and have never freed myself from the dilemma that the album
creates in itself. Doubt. Sometimes I talk about this with the Hanxmen and
almost all of them say: doubt is a bad sign. An album seldom conquers this
nagging feeling. Dingman sings softly and sensitively and his music is ably
performed, by himself and by his choice of musicians. The influence of Hank
Williams and Bob Dylan asserts itself without talk of a Xerox effect.
Goddamn Wonderful World is very nice. And occasionally Dingman surprises
with a funny sentence, such as:
"They say an angel’s watching you
All the fucking time..."
Halfway through the album you have modesty, which is awfully necessary, and
in itself is no disgrace, because Chris Dingman is not a singer of allure,
though he does have a warm and sensitive soul-touching sound, pleasant to
listen to and which creates a feeling of overwhelming commotion. What if
Hank Williams grew up listening to The Beatles? Dingman asks on his website.
I have to honestly say that I don’t think much of that question, because for
me the Fab Four are all surface and form and can’t touch the soulful song of
the Lonesome One. And right, I know that I’m digressing, this is based on
neither the glorification for one nor the disgust for the other. No, the
question that really needs asking is this: what would happen if we put Chris
Dingman in a confined space every day and forced him to listen to a hardcore
album until he made his third album?
by Wim Boluijt
(translated from the Belgian by Carrye
Broersma)
www.hanx.net
Country Home
"All 10 songs on this CD hang together with a
common theme. The pieces are smart, but they do not go for easy satisfaction
of the heart with cliched country wisdom. Every melody sticks in your mind,
every number has a theme: Love. The singers voice always stays tender, even
when the Band rocks. Sometime you wish he would come on a bit stronger, but
maybe that just make the heartache come through. Will pedal steel, fiddle,
acoustic and electric guitars.
Regarding this, the singer Dingman states: 'I'm not interested in telling
stories, or trying to write from some other character's perspective. I write
to explore and express my inner life--to acknowledge wounds and in doing
that, to heal them. In that sense my songs are personal. But a song isn't
journal writing. It also has to open out to the listener and invite them in.
So I want my lyrics to be accessible, not private. I want them to resonate
with others.'
Pretty smart, eh?"
(translated from the German by Helmut
Fickenwirth)
review online (www.iwde.de)
Popmatters
"On Heartbreak Sampler, Crooked Roads dishes
out a 10-course pu pu plattering of heartache, loneliness, and general
world-weariness..."
...for the complete June 23, 2006 review,
visit Popmatters
Americana Homeplace
Heartbreak Sampler is the latest release from Crooked
Roads--a California-based group that is essentially the alter-ego of
singer-songwriter Chris Dingman. Hailing from New Hampshire, Dingman began
playing guitar at the age of 21. After moving to California, he worked as a
screenwriter before turning his attention to songwriting and performing.
Heartbreak Sampler is a folk-oriented recording with definite country
instincts. Pedal steel, fiddle and harmonica accentuate this fine collection
of relaxed and reflective Americana music.
americanahomeplace.com
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