Nat Myers – Yellow Peril
Easy Eye Sound
10 Songs – 32 minutes
Nat Parker is a Korean – American born in Kansas. In his early life, he moved to West Tennessee and then to Northern Kentucky. He states that he had a rowdy childhood, was signed up by his parents to play trumpet in the school band, which he hated. He spent his days on his skateboard and listening to pop-punk and hardcore music. His mother bought him a guitar and although he taught himself how to play, he still had no aspirations as a musician. But he loved poetry and realized that his musical interests were in the blues, which his father loved, particularly the itinerant musicians from the 1930’s and 40’s. He studied poetry at the New School in New York City. He worked odd jobs and eventually took up busking, realizing that today’s poets must perform. Covid hit and he returned home through the pandemic.
He then started to upload videos on social media. Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys and the founder of Easy Eye Sound heard his music on-line and brought him to Nashville. After several visits, the two determined they had many common interests. Dan arranged for Nat to co-write with him, songwriter Pat McLaughlin, and blues artist Alvin Youngblood Hart. Dan then produced Nat’s album in his home rather than in his studio as Nat’s folk blues seemed more suited to Dan’s 100-year-old house and Nat’s foot stomp on the hardwood floor. The result is an album that can sound like something from an earlier era of music but is modern in its lyrics and today’s social concerns. Of obvious concern to Nat is the growing anti- Asian sentiment that has grown out of Covid.
Nat had led an itinerant existence that feeds the first song “75-71”, the two interstates that feed from Northern Kentucky down to Lexington and Louisville. In the song he talks about traveling to those two cities to meet his gal in Lexington, then pick up a riverboat in Louisville. He then says he met a hobo, and they jumped a train to Memphis. He ends back in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, a small community in the western side of Boone County, Kentucky.
On “Trixin”, he says “Way you been treating me is rubbing me raw”. ” I ain’t trixin’ with you no more”. The title song addresses the animosity he has experienced following Covid. “Started in China, lordy, you headed to my backyard, lordy.” “Telling me that you looking like a yellow man, lordy”. “Everywhere I been somebody being abused.” “There never ever was a difference ‘tween you and I”. He said that he wanted the song to have the feel of Charley Patton’s “Boll Weevil Blues”, which addressed a period of time when the boll weevil spread across the land and was the personification of Patton’s experiences.
He promises his woman that he will not “Ramble No More”, “if you let me in, baby”. He notes “When a man ain’t got nothing there ain’t nothing he can do but find some old highway and put on his traveling shoes.” “Duck and Dodge” comes from him listening to Hogman Maxey on Negro Prison Blues and Songs and a fascination of his strings’ sound. he again begs his woman to “Let me in.”
“Roscoe” paints a picture that his woman might be trying to kill him, alternately telling her to “put down that roscoe”, “put down that ball-peen hammer, darling, I’m sorry I mad you mad”. “Strychnine, turpentine, Darling what you put in my food?”. “No heaven in your future, judge gonna give you 99.” He says that “Misbehavin’ Mama” comes from listening to Blind Boy Fuller’s “Step It Up and Go” and Son House describing blues as a feeling. “Ask my baby where she been she told me that been out with a friend.” “Misbehavin’ mama, it’s always something like that.”
Next, he tells his woman “You got a “Heart Like a Scroll”, wrap me in it wherever you go” “you can tell your friends, tell your other man, since you met me, you done had a change of plans.” Dan pulled out a slide guitar to join Nat on “Undertaker Blues” as he sings, “someone better check your head; I will call the undertaker; believe our love is dead.” After all of the songs above dealing with issues with his woman, on “Pray for Rain” he is trying to assure that he wants a long-term relationship. “I’ll put you in mother’s locket, drag you around in my back pocket, carry you with me every day.” “4 years in I still want more, I ain’t walking out the door.” “If I told you once I told you twice, I’m a be your ever-loving man for life”. Auerbach joins in on acoustic guitar and upright bass, McLaughlin also plays guitar and mandolin, and Leroy Troy play banjo and washboard on the track.
Nat’s vocal style and dobro guitar matches much of the style of depression era musicians. His real-life roaming ways fit that earlier eras’ musical ventures. Auerbach has done an excellent job of catching Nat’s poetry and casting it in terms that can reach blues lovers.
