W.S. Walcott Medicine Show

03. Big Ugly – Fust (Dear Life Records)

Big Ugly was easily my most listened to album all year.  Right from the opening guitar strums of lead track “Spangled”, you immediately get the feel that what you’re hearing is going to be real good.  Then Aaron Dowdy’s vocals kick in just ahead of Justin Morris’s pedal steel and all of a sudden it’s pure unadulterated Americana magic.  Big Ugly then proceeds with “Gateleg”, a tale of the changing times in the rural southern Appalachian Mountains.  The factory jobs have gone and now all that’s left is stocking shelves at Maggie’s general store.  And this pretty much sums up the general theme throughout all of Big Ugly.  This is a quintessential album about the down and out dirty south.  Dowdy’s songs nail it when it comes to conceptualizing what it’s like in the 21st century rural south, with nothing but dead-end jobs and ancient memories of not very much better times.  In song after song, Dowdy succeeds in depicting tales of the down trodden with the crisp detail and specific cultural minutia that only a true southern insider could pull off.   Much like fellow songwriter and southerner Lee Bains III, Dowdy manages to capture the conundrum of living in the modern South.  Both men are pure southerners but have also spent significant time away from the south, thus can articulate both the good, the bad and the ugly but with a sense of pride and appreciation for their southern heritage and culture. Of course, these wonderful tales would probably fall flat if they weren’t backed by equally wonderful musicianship and Fust as a band provide exactly that. Big Ugly is an album which should not be slept upon.