I GOT LUCKY

I GOT LUCKY

John Dendy's first release, I Got Lucky is a desperate, tragic beautiful and heartfelt collection of eleven songs spanning over eight years of songwriting. Taken as a whole, they are a soundtrack to a wandering soul in search of his own truth on a desolate landscape of heartache, confusion, yearning and hope. All good art extrapolates an inner truth, or a search for it, and with I Got Lucky Dendy succeeds in carving a definitive path through the darkness of abandoned empty roads followed on late night drives, of loud bars where quiet conversations bring redemption and on porches on the summer where friends gather to play music and knock back a few PBRs.

Dendy grew up in the South and moved to Montana in the mid 1990s. His education and intelligence betray themselves in his well rendered lyrics which never come off as trite or contrived. Imagine Springsteen's Greetings done in the style of The Ghost of Tom Joad with a healthy dose of whiskey sung in a roadhouse somewhere into which you stumbled after a long day of driving across the Dakotas in the heat of summer and you might have an idea of how I Got Lucky sounds. You don't need to imagine, though, because you can hear samples of the songs which appear on the disc over at John's website. Explore the site a little, then click BUY MY CD to listen to clips. You'll be taken to the CD BABY page where the clips are available in MP3 streams and where you can get the disc.

It's the first CD I've bought in a long time, having migrated my listening habits mostly to digital because of the radio show I do over at KBGA. It's a $15 well spent, and I have been listening to the album for two solid straight days. The flow of the songs from one into the next is well thought-out, and illustrates the care that went into selecting the songs that appear on the album, as well as the order in which they appear.

The disc opens with a bluegrass infused "Where are You?". After the bleak Never Was Golden, which includes the brilliant metaphor of a "hazelnut heart", we get Tattoo, whose lyrics are one-liner after another through the better part of the song (I can't give away the punchline, sorry), and then the very short "Communist Party", a playful song whose social commentary won't be lost on most listeners. Dendy then lays down Gardiner River Bridge, an ill-named(?) song that remembers walking across the bridge over the Yellowstone River in Gardiner, Montana, thinking about lost love. He's smart enough not to dwell in self-pity, and pokes fun at the emo kids with the driving bluegrass tinged Restless. You can almost hear the laughter and the clanking of empty beer bottles on the porch on this one. With "Men", Dendy pays tribute to some of his close friends and what makes them strong human beings before taking a country-western turn with "Just Because", a favorite. "Stupid to Them" nods back to "Men" with its message about the importance of being true to oneself, which Dendy questions on Selling Myself. The album closes with a hard song that features one of my favorite lyrics I've ever heard Dendy sing, "...the only part of me that's still grieving/is you". Nobody Home is a kick in the gut because of its honesty and rawness.

The danger with songs of this intensity is that the singer might fall into the depths of self-loathing and depression that make for the bad emo-band poetry written with black ink on black paper in the darkness of one's mid-western suburban basement. Instead, Dendy sings with self-confidence and honesty that is missing from much of the mainstream music being released today.

BUY THE ALBUM

You can also pick up the album by catching John play out. He's scheduled to play some Montana shows. If you get a chance to check him out and you live in Helena, Bozeman or Livingston, you can see John play. All shows are free:

Saturday, January 21st, 2006 9:00 PM MST
Helena CD Release
Windbag Saloon
Last Chance Gulch

Thursday, February 16th, 2006 7:30 PM MST
Leaf & Bean - Bozeman
Main Street

Bozeman friends. Come give a listen and check out my new CD.
Friday, February 17th, 2006 7:00 PM MST
Chadz - Livingston

Friday, March 31st, 2006 8:00 PM MST
leaf & bean - bozeman
Main Street