Blanche
w/Ditty Bops, Purty Mouth
Sat June 25,
Crocodile Cafe,
9 pm, $10
Blanche's If We Can't Trust the Doctors... is probably the greatest alt-country album ever to come out of Detroit. This work possesses the air of something built to last and resonate deeply in the hearts and minds of the genre's hardcore—and with people indifferent to alt-country who have a weakness for songs tinged with bittersweet ache.
Said ache has its roots in tragic losses suffered by Blanche front-folk (and married couple) Dan John Miller (guitar, vocals, fiddle) and Tracee Mae Miller (bass, vocals). Dan's painter/musician brother Michael and Tracee's father passed away during the making of Doctors. Blanche turned the rancid lemons life handed them into tasty lemonade, which convinced Dirtbombs drummer Ben Blackwell to issue Doctors on his Cass imprint. "I knew that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to put out such a beautiful, honest, and tragic record," Blackwell says. (V2 has since picked up the album.)
Before forming Blanche in 1999, Dan Miller played in Two Star Tabernacle from 1997 to 1999 with White Stripes's male half, and before that fronted popular cow-punk goofballs Goober & the Peas. Blanche also consist of Dave Feeny (pedal steel, backing vocals, piano, melodica, clarinet), Lisa "Jaybird" Jannon (drums), and Jack Lawrence (banjo), the Greenhornes bassist who recently replaced Brian "Patch" Boyle. Miller's guiding principle for Blanche was to have everyone (except for him, ha ha) play instruments they hadn't touched before.
"It was definitely wrongheaded," Miller says of Blanche's ethos, but it resulted in "getting people in the band who had similar inspirations musically, and we wanted it to be like a family." For Miller, musical taste and inter-band camaraderie trumped technical ability.
"That's what worked with the album: to take everyone's simple talents and try to arrange the music in a way that would keep it interesting," Miller says.
"Two Star Tabernacle and Goober & the Peas were both influenced by country music," Miller says, "but there's always been a raw rock-and-roll side to the music that I've done, which is more typical of Detroit. When we started Blanche, there weren't many bands [in Detroit] that sounded like us, and I think it was refreshing to people. About five years ago, there was an overabundance of bands... like the Stooges and recorded songs in that vein. I think people want something different."
Different Doctors is, especially in the context of the Motor City's raucous rock history. Subtlety guides Blanche through potentially kitsch (fire)waters; their country rock eludes cornpone sonics and vocal mannerisms. "Who's to Say," a sparse ballad of heart-melting poignancy, sets the tone (White contributes a guitar solo). The flowing country-rock of "Do You Trust Me?" evokes Nancy/Lee–style give and take, with Feeny's beautiful pedal-steel peals cascading over the loping beat. Blanche turn the Gun Club barnstormer "Jack on Fire" into a soul-shredding ballad, teasing out the moving melody buried within J.L. Pierce's fiercely rollicking composition.
Doctors peaks on "The Hopeless Waltz" whose timeless, yearning melody recalls R.E.M.'s early ballads. With a Hank-ish twang, Miller sings, "When you're sadder than sad, that's when hope drives you mad. When nothing feels true, hope preys on you." He leavens the album's bleak subject matter with sly humor and clever wordplay. "That's another way of dealing with grief and sorrow," Miller says. "You have to be able to laugh at yourself." Even the disc's hidden track packs a devilish yuk.
If Goober were about punk energy and Hee-Haw laughs, though, Blanche are about sobering, melancholy reflection and consoling bliss. "Goober was a more easily digestible thing," Miller muses. "Blanche grows on you more like a fungus; [it's] a more emotionally true band for what's going on."
Would Doctors have sounded the same had the Millers not experienced their tragedies?
"I don't think there's any way it would've sounded the same," Miller speculates. "But when you're writing songs, you just have to write what's inside you. At the same time, you've got to think about it musically; you don't want it to be overly depressing or self-indulgent. Hopefully, other people can relate to the emotion of the song." ■
