Untamed Sense of Control: Kentucky Women of Freakwater Mine Southern Gothic

By Don Allred

Nov. 2, 2005

http://clclt.com/charlotte/an-untamed-sense-of-control/Content?oid=2140845

Once upon a time, the early 80s, in the land o' Goshen -- a nice, woodsy suburb of Louisville, KY -- two teenaged girls, Janet Bean and Cathy Irwin, got in involved in a series of punk bands, including Butt In The Front, Dickbrains, Skull of Glee, and Bunny Butthole. But one night, as Irwin told it later, they dressed in dresses, painted themselves up, and went way downtown into Louisville, to the Beat Club, between a bunch of strip joints and hooker bars, and sang a few of the oldest, twangiest country songs they knew.

They didn't particularly mean to make a habit of this. Yet somehow, as the Tammy Wynette fashion sense and garage-y combos moved on, Irwin and Bean found themselves still singing together, under the name of Freakwater, supposedly a hillbilly synonym for moonshine. At first, they covered other people's songs and then, very gradually, began writing more and more of their own. Freakwater specialized in older-than-old-school country, also known as "folk" music: chronicles of love and other disasters, full of dark, rich imagery. And the tunes? They're often kinda pretty, but they don't wear much makeup.

Irwin's the flat-picking, smoky alto, who lives mostly in Louisville and paints canvases, houses and other rude objects; Bean's the strumming, translucent soprano, who moved to Chicago, worked in offices. While in Chicago, Bean sang, wrote and drummed for Eleventh Dream Day, hardy neo-psychedelic stalwarts since the 80s: well-carved, pungent tracks like "Ice Storm" and "Frozen Mile" evoke San Francisco's Jack London and Jefferson Airplane shining a battered lantern way, way up the Yukon, although they're more likely inspired by Windy City winters. (A new EDD album will be out in spring 2006.)

The two released a valley volley of Freakwater records between 1989 and 1999, then nothing until last year, when Irwin came up to Chi-Town for the recording of Thinking of You, their first album of new material since '99's End Time.

On both of these sets, the duo fits many session musicians into a remarkably intimate, seemingly home-brewed sound. But while adjusting the EQ, I notice how easy it is to mess up the mix, so that the instruments suddenly crowd the voices. And sometimes the lyrical images crowd the themes -- see End Time's "Cloak Of Frogs," one of Freakwater's many struggles-with-religion-and-guilt songs, as sensationally Southern Gothic as you might suspect from its title. (Although, come to think of it, triggering the sense of getting crowded, with frogs, for instance, or instruments, for that matter, just might be deliberate. Wouldn't put it past them.)

These are risks worth taking, and usually Freakwater's art and hearts can cut a deal. Irwin's remarkable 2003 solo album, Cut Yourself A Switch, evokes a long-gone Christmas Day, when she and her brother sang with their family about baby Jesus. Then the two siblings wandered off to where "the snow would not cover the ground," (probably not far; the South still had 'em) and there they cobbled together a snowman, who kept trying to fall apart, despite their best efforts, but his "dirty mouth smiled." According to the song, "Three worlds collided, on the day of his creation, his head and his heart set on the arc of his foundation." Sounds like a carol that's determined not to be a hymn.

Freakwater's recently released Thinking Of You (its pretty, nearly vacant cover design that of a $.99 generic greeting card, arriving with press pictures of the ladies offering burning roses) is a little more overtly electrified than previous albums. Sounds like small engines and other critters waking up after the long winter's nap since End Time, raring to go. Once again, Irwin and Bean call out their marching orders to all thangs sacred and profane: "Hi Ho Silver, high on pills, use your hands, and tell me how I feel. Higher power, higher hands up mine, tell me why your God is so divine."

It's a challenge, but an invitation too, like all their songs. So try to be ready when Freakwater gets here. As Bob Dylan observed of their fellow Kentuckian Roscoe Holcomb, they now have “a certain untamed sense of control.”

Freakwater plays at the Evening Muse, with opener Jim Elkington, who has worked with Janet Bean as duo The Horse's Ha, at 8pm November 3. Tickets are $10.00-$12.00. Call 1-800-594-TIXX or go to www.musictoday.com
For more background, see http://history.louisvillehardcore.com/index.php?title=A_Brief_History_of_Louisville_Music_As_It_Pertains_to_Freakwater
(Update: Little Healer, Irwin's second solo album, materialized in 2012, almost a decade after the first, and is well worth dipping your head in: :https://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2012/09/irwinomic-pressures-hoganpolitan-release.html )