Logan Ledger Review

Logan Ledger is a Bay Area songwriter and vocalist. The Nashville-based artist sets most of his songs in lightless or shadowy spaces: the bottom of the ocean, the abandoned cells of Alcatraz, dreamless bedrooms, desolate streets in the dead of night. Ledger is releasing his highly anticipated self-titled debut album, which is produced by 13-time GRAMMY AWARD winner T Bone Burnett. The music on the eleven tracks embraces the roots of country music with a sound that is deeply grounded in classic songmanship of the genre. Burnett plays guitar on more than half the tracks, with the rest of the band being filled out by guitarist Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello), drummer Jay Bellerose (Willie Nelson, Jackson Browne), and bassist Dennis Crouch (Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton)—the same band that played on Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, a Burnett-produced release that won Album of the Year at the 2009 Grammy Awards. Joined by guitarist/pedal steel player Russell Pahl (Kacey Musgraves, Tyler Childers).  The music on the album brings in threads of acid rock, and surf music and baroque ’60s pop to forge a decidedly Californian country sound.

“Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me” begins with Ledger singing to just his guitar. The lyrics are interesting and well-constructed. The band comes in to create an authentic country setting for Ledger’s definably country vocal style. Pahl’s pedal steel playing is beautiful and interacts with Ledger’s vocals in a haunting commentary. There are elements of old country mixed with folk, and Ledger’s vibrato also brings back the sounds of traditional country. The guitar solo is a highlight, with a clear motif and chords surrounded by double stops and bends.

“I Don’t Dream Anymore” is a psychedelic selection that has elements of ‘60s pop-rock. Here Ledger’s voice is equally at home as it is in the country style. The band is similarly up to the style, and together they present a song that is catchy and has a nice flow. The up-tempo feel is a nice break from the album’s theme of the downhearted mood of woozy meditation on inescapable sadness. “I Don’t Dream Anymore” instead take a page from the Roy Orbison songbook and speaks about dreaming, then flips the script with the oddly glorious “I Don’t Dream Anymore.” “It could be taken quite literally—the way I’m living, I don’t remember my dreams at all these days—or it could reflect a cynical attitude toward modern times,” Ledger notes.

With an approach towards a classic throwback country sound, Logan Ledger offers the listener an authenticity that is warming and filled with a reminiscence of yesteryear, when simpler times reined.  A welcomed sound in this trying era of worrisome troubles.  It is evidently clear he is deeply influenced by Orbison’s evergreen music.

Logan Ledger: Website