FIRE UP THE COUNTRY, ROCK AND SOUL WITH REIGNING SOUND
“I had a lot of unprocessed trauma… I needed to do some work.” GREG CARTWRIGHT
“THERE WAS a reason I always ran away from success,” says Reigning Sound mainman Greg Cartwright from his home in Asheville, North Carolina. “I’ve seen what it can to do people, and it really did kind of terrify me. Really, I’m at the level where I would like to be.”
That level moves at his own pace. He hasn’t made a Reigning Sound record since 2014: in the interim he’s worked at a local guitar showroom, been “the 45s guy” at the city’s Harvest record shop, hosted his own local radio shows and got on with raising his three kids. There’s also been self-examination (more of which later). But this group is worth waiting for: out this month, A Little More Time
With Reigning Sound is, as ever, a Memphis affair, wedding vintage rock’n’roll, soul and country moves with a masterful, perceptive songcraft. It hatched when Cartwright’s first dates with the group’s original line-up for years coincided with a sudden spurt of writing and the pandemic hitting.
“That the dynamic was still there,” says Cartwright. “The possibility of making a record with those guys made me want to make a record, shall we say.” A vinyl collector since he was six, Cartwright was raised in Memphis, and lists Bowie, the British Invasion and Nilsson among his early turn-ons. As a 16-year-old punk, an encounter with Tav Falco’s Panther Burns opened his mind to the blues, rockabilly and other roots sounds. His first group was the Compulsive Gamblers, though from ’93 he made more impact with down-and-dirty garage primitivists The Oblivians, who were tipped for the kind of success enjoyed by The White Stripes in the early noughties.
Yet all was not well. “In The Oblivians, there was a lot of irony, raciness and costumes being put on,” says Cartwright. “I was happy when it ended because it required me to let a very damaged part of myself be in charge. The label now owns that material. It’s like you made a bad joke and you can’t scrub it away. Someone else insists on it still being out there for everyone to hear.”
He was already heading into more reflective, adult directions with next project Reigning Sound. Kicking off with Break Up… Break Down in 2001, a modest but potent discography followed. Through discs including 2011’s Dan Auerbach-produced
Abdication… For Your Love and 2007’s Cartwright-helmed Mary Weiss LP Dangerous
Game, past American forms were revisited with truth but never parodic intent (for a glowing example, see the sweetly heartsick Never Coming Home from 2014’s
Shattered). “The melody is just as important as the lyric,” says Cartwright of his methods. “When I’ve said something I need to say and the hook is gonna hit just the right spot… you can just feel it when you do it right.”
Compared to the melancholy of earlier releases, one of the most striking aspects of A Little More Time… is its optimism. “There was a lot of therapy going on [in recent years],” says Cartwright, who’s planning at least one more Reigning Sound album and maybe another record with Coco Hames as the Parting Gifts. “I had a lot of unprocessed trauma and I needed to do some work. I think this album is more of a helpful statement than some things I’ve had to say in the past. And I can write better songs now.”
A Little More Time With Reigning Sound is released this month on Merge Records.