Artist: Roy Schneider & Kim Mayfield
Album: Reckless Saints
Label: Shiny Gnu Records
Release Date: 11.2.18
Roy Schneider is finally ready to talk about Straight Inc. Housed for a year in one of the controversial drug rehabilitation centers—places accused of horrible abuses, until they closed in 1993—as a teenager in the 1980s, Schneider made a daring escape and went underground. The whole nightmarish experience is chronicled in “Angels Along the Road,” a rush of light, rustic Americana that feels as if it is running for its life.
Getting by on the kindness of strangers, “Angels Along the Road” is a dramatic tale of survival with a brisk gait and a rolling topography of twirling mandolin and acoustic guitar strum that only serves to enhance Schneider’s gripping storytelling. Steve Earle couldn’t have done it better, and like the rest of Reckless Saints, the song’s well-oiled gears of traditional instrumentation turn with the precision of a fine clock.
On the album, Schneider and Kim Mayfield, his wife and full-time performing partner, dance with elements of authentic folk, country, blues and rock as if they’ve been in love with them all their lives, which is probably true. The care with which refined arrangements are developed suggests a Lyle Lovett infatuation. Just as captivating is the lithe musicianship that gooses the lively opener “Jump In,” a bolt of lightning flashing steely dobro and electrifying handclaps. It sends “Walkin’ on a Wire” and the rollicking piano riot “Subjugated Love” hurtling forward, but is pearly and alluring in Mayfield’s softly sashaying ballad “Ring Around the Moon,” which seems haunted by Patsy Cline.
Enlisting Blaze Foley’s old musical partner Gurf Morlix for help, Schneider and Mayfield cover Foley’s classic “Election Day” with rough passion, but the beautifully rendered “If I Die Tomorrow” and “Poison Arrow” swoon in their arms. All who cry out for salvation from Reckless Saints might experience the same effect.
—Peter Lindblad
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