JERRY DAvID DECICCA Time The Teacher
8/10
Reflective delights from unruffled Texan transplant
DECICCA is a man of many guises. As frontman with Ohio’s experimental folkies The Black Swans, he issued a handful of albums from 2004 onwards. His more recent endeavours include avant-noise project Walks On The Beach, production work for leftfield types Ed Askew and Chris Gantry, plus liner notes for the belated release of Elyse Weinberg’s ‘lost’ ’60s treasure, Greasepaint Smile.
For the moment, though, DeCicca is engaged in the solo career that began with 2014’s Understanding Land. Its follow-up is a thing of gentle and radiant wonder, a psychogeographical diary of the Texas Hill Country that he now calls home. In many ways, Time Of The Teacher feels ageless, its defining characteristics being soft piano, muted horns and gospel harmonies, all moving along with the same unhurried serenity as DeCicca’s voice. There are parallels with ’69 Dylan and Augie Meyers in his easy delivery, as well as co-producer Jeb Loy Nichols, with whom DeCicca collaborated on Larry Jon Wilson’s final recordings a decade ago.
Most of the songs draw from direct experience. The title track was inspired by his cross-county journeys while teaching mental health awareness to local schools, though its impressionistic nature also makes it a wider hymn to discovery and wisdom. “Mustang Island”, written on the South Texan beach of the same name, is set under an October sky, the Gulf Coast breeze warming its lungs. “Sand in my guitar/Salt in the air,” sings DeCicca, in a manner that suggests all his cares have long been flung to the waves. The naturalistic imagery spreads into “Woodpecker”, an account of a woodland camping trip that doubles as a call for companionship, with said bird disappearing into the dawn mist. “Lazy River” unwinds as slowly as Matthew Bourne’s piano motif, accompanied by a trumpet solo from Fulvio Sigurta that’s the very definition of laid-back cool. DeCicca sings of swapping Cleveland for the land of guns, God and geckos, burying his past in the process. On a creative level, he’s clearly settled in just fine.