From the Dec 16 – Dec 22, 2004 issue

Music

Border Radio

Roots & Americana

by Kurt B. Reighley

Listening to pioneering jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton in the tour van. Thanking John Fahey, the iconoclastic, eccentric guitarist who married traditional finger-picking styles to a host of unlikely genres, in your CD liner notes. These are activities one would associate with a 46-year-old roots-music artist. But a pair of 23-year-old bucks? Yup. Yet it makes sense if you do the math, says singer-guitarist Adam Stephens, one half of San Francisco duo Two Gallants, as he and drummer Tyson Vogel sail along the highway with Jelly Roll banging away in the background.

"We see each other pretty much every day," Stephens says of Vogel, his friend since kindergarten. "We're becoming the same person." And 23 plus 23 does equal 46.

Actually, these clues don't seem so odd once you've sampled the Gallants' 2004 debut, The Throes (Alive Records). Critics have likened the duo to folk-rock giants such as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, but upon closer inspection, the former comparison seems to stem primarily from Stephens' facility on harmonica, and the latter to a knack for penning cheery couplets like, "It ain't no difference which way I smile/I ain't good lookin' from a quarter mile." To these ears, Stephens' voice recalls John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats at his most unhinged, while the ferocity with which Two Gallants render their compositions conjures the devil-at-my-heels clamor of blues-punk greats the Gun Club circa 1981's Fire of Love.

Enough with the triangulation; let's get down to specifics. One aspect of the Gallants' artistry that distinguishes The Throes is a willingness to write from viewpoints other than the masculine first person. The harrowing epic "The Train That Stole My Man" could have sprung from the seasoned pen of Dolly Parton or Loretta Lynn, while the title track finds an omniscient narrator detailing a gruesome scene of domestic violence in close quarters ("He's got the kind of love that never shows").

"A lot of modern songwriting falls into a kind of repetitive voice," Stephens laments. He credits growing up in the liberal environs of S.F. as one key influence of opening up the Gallants to telling stories from other perspectives. "And also, just reading a lot of modernist authors," he adds. "That's a big technique a lot of them used... [a man] writing as a woman, describing her family life, or writing as a Southern black man, even if you're a wealthy white man from up North. So it's kind of a combination of those."

The band--who perform Tuesday, December 21, at the Crocodile--also display a gift for stretching their compelling songs out over seven and eight minutes, without descending to the mind-numbing repetitiveness of, say, "American Pie." Is there a trick to sustaining the listener's interest for that long? Nope. "It's more our inability to write a short song," admits Stephens. Themes of loss and heartbreak also recur throughout their work, but we'll skip the analysis of Two Gallants' abandonment issues. Besides, they always have each other.

kurt@thestranger.com

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