Aaron Newman and the OK Caravan is a four piece band from Oklahoma City that merges a wide range of styles, ranging from jazz to pop, with their southern American roots.
The opening track, 1892, is a wistful reflection that compares the frantic pace of modern day life with a slower, better integrated way of life lived by people at the end of the 19th century. This sets the tone for the wide range of subject matter covered by the album. The second track is entitled the Battle of Washita River and concerns an attack in 1868 on a band of Cheyenne Indians camped along the river banks. The attack was led by the (in)famous General Custer who reported at the time that he had won a resounding victory against a dangerous enemy. A more recent examination of the evidence…
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…and in particular the fact that in a full-frontal charge against a ‘well armed and belligerent enemy’ Custer lost only one man, suggests that this was, in fact, a massacre of a peaceful encampment.
In the course of this powerful song, the musical texture opens up to give Carlton Dorsey’s fiddle space to shine and even allow percussionist Walton McMurray to show that he can do a lot more than keep a rock steady beat on drums.
Throughout the album it is Aaron Newman’s vocals that bring the songs to life. His voice has a flexibility that adapts to the mood of the different songs and, whilst it sounds stretched at the top of his register, he always manages to convey the meaning and emotions behind the song.
Winter Blues, the sixth track on the album, is a sad, slow lament for a lost love coupled with the onset of winter. This is followed by the fast, almost frantic Only In America which reflects on some of the country’s social ills. Set side-by-side, these two songs highlight the band’s ability to switch styles and to present a range of different sounds and approaches to suit whatever song they are performing.
The band saves one of the most interesting aspect of their work for the very last track. Traditionally, when planning an album, a band saves either a particularly hooky song or a piece of virtuosic pyrotechnics for the last track. That way, anyone listening to the album finishes on a high, often feeling ready to listen again.
The last track on Aaron Newman and the OK Caravan is a reprise of a previous song on the album, Winter Blues. But the fascinating thing about listening to this reprise is that whilst the words, the tune and the basic chord structure are the same, the much faster tempo, the more gutsy attack and the different instrumentation make it a completely different song. I’ve gone back and listened again to the different versions to try and decide which I liked better, but they are so different that any meaningful comparison is impossible.
This gulf between the two versions of just one song, points towards the hundreds, possibly thousands, of artistic decisions that have gone into the careful crafting of every song on the album.