Ernie Palmer’s music is about as unhip as one can imagine. The 76-year-old retired elementary school teacher and Vietnam veteran sings self-penned old-fashioned songs about rural life, old times, and war in a creaky voice. He plays the acoustic guitar in a relaxed manner that adds a light filigree to the traditional melodies. He wants you to understand the lyrics and appreciate his instrumental accompaniment. In addition, Palmer is assisted by Aaron Zimmer and Jay Rudd on backup vocals and assorted stringed instruments, Vito Gutilla on fiddle, and Taylor Swan on pedal steel.
The music has a front porch vibe, but without the competition that sometimes results. These fellas aren’t showing off. There’s a collective search for the right note, the proper pacing, and complementary harmonizing that puts the narratives first. These are story songs that are more observant than moralistic. Despite the album title, the former teacher is not, in fact, a preacher. He’s more interested in providing a lesson than telling one how to behave.
Ernie Palmer sounds his age. His drawl marks him as a hick whose naïve intelligence is hidden from the surface. He’s the white trash “Bastard Boy” who burns down mansions in antebellum Kentucky. He’s the desperado of the West under the “Comanche Moon” who kills before the law kills him. The singer’s actual age reinforces these tales of pre-20th-century life as if being old makes one ageless.
Something is shocking about the nakedness of the whole project. One half expects him to be 200 years old, so when he sings about working the “Night Shift” in a late-night café before the time of fast food, CB radios, and other pre-contemporary conveniences, it almost seems like he must be making up the recent past as well.
Zimmer and Rudd produced the record, endowing it with tranquility. The silence between the notes speaks louder than the voices and instruments in the best sense. That highlights what is left out in the narratives. For example, the protagonist of “The Last Night at Tony’s” is a lonely old man whose isolation is conveyed as much by the sparse instrumentation as by the lyrics. On “Wanderlust”, a young man knows that his being on the road “is the kiss of death”, but can’t escape his fate. Other tales feature more lurid tales, but Palmer’s first-person protagonists usually end up alone with death somewhere in the shadows.
The closest musical equivalent to Ernie Palmer would be the late Malcolm Holcombe, whose grumbly vocals and homespun tales made it challenging to decide if he was the real deal or putting on an act. The truth is, he was a storyteller whose authenticity lay in the quality of his art. Palmer is the same. His tales are true to the heart, even when they are obviously made up.
Like the newspaperman in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Palmer understands that the legend shares a deeper meaning than the actual facts might suggest. The musician can reach places that a story by itself may not be able to. Ernie Palmer is so square he’s cool, so old that he’s young, and he takes us on journeys to the past without us having to leave our chairs.