Service Station Chicken - Dave Favours & The Roadside Ashes (Stanley Records)
Dave Favours & The Roadside Ashes make country music for people who don’t like country music. That’s a truism, not a slur.
The point is that the players’ background in underground Oz rock and roll, circa late 1980s rolling into the ‘90s, is apparent in their playing. You play enough sticky carpet dives where patrons demand to be impressed and you become a harder player. At least that's how it was before streaming. These Roadside Ashes have a work ethic honed over some years.
Dave Favours & The Roadside Ashes live are a good night out and their album reflects that. There are rockers and there are brooders on the band’s third full-length and it’s their best to date. There’s a solitary cover - Chris Masuak’s “Didn’t Tell The Man, recorded by Radio Birdman but first released by his Hitmen – so you can’t accuse them of hiding their influences under a Stetson.
There are big streaks of country twang here – the sweet “Rosalie” and the stark and reflective “Where The Buses Never Run” are the best examples – but heard in its entirety over the course of a few listens, “Service Station Chicken” is a bullshit-free Australian take on Americana.
Band leader Dave Favours leads from the front with his weathered vocal, strong guitar-work and neat lyrical turn. Dave Hatt is right beside him, doing the lion’s share of lead guitar work with his clear tone resonating nicely. Bassist Driza-Bone-D and Looch Lewis lock down the bottom end with an unobtrusive tightness.
The core band is augmented by pedal steel player Aaron Langman, producer Michael Carpenter on Hammond and piano and Chris Louey on violin. Carpenter’s soundscapes are uncluttered and full-bodied. Dan Emery mastered it at Black Matter in Nashville.
The songs delve some familiar country themes but if the tongue’s in the cheek for much of the journey; Favours and his Roadside Ashes never cross over into parody. “Waterfront Blues” sets the groove from the get-go. “Dreaming With The Dead” soars on top of a rolling feel and Louey’s violin.
The “Didn’t Tell The Man” cover has Masuak’s succinct seal of approval (“groovy”) so you know it’s good. Props for that neat pedal steel work.
If much of mainstream country music is the lyrical battlefield for a class war, “2 Car Garage” gets the avarice sparking with its sharp guitar interplay. As for the title track - it has a resonance all its own with ringing guitars and a build to the somewhat resigned chorus. Favours reckons it reference the mid-‘80s Saints and if you disagree with that, you probably grew up in the wrong time and place.
It’s not stretching it to say that “Rosalie” sounds just a touch like The Church would if Steve Kilbey traded in his pot for moonshine.
