An endearing epitaph from a legend
Much like Warren Zevon’s The Wind, Jesse Winchester’s A Reasonable Amount of Trouble turned out to be his own epitaph. Unlike Zevon’s album, recorded in the shadow of a terminal diagnosis, Winchester recorded this final studio work while in remission, with hope still on the horizon. But even with his cancer at bay, mortality had clearly become a presence that was impossible to ignore. And so Winchester engaged it directly with songs that ponder life, and indirectly with songs – particularly cover songs – that held onto his abiding faith in music.
Reaching back to the Clovers’ “Devil or Angel,†the Del-Vikings’ “Whispering Bells†(complete with yakety sax), and the Cascades’ “Rhythm of the Rain,†Winchester found comfort in songs that had first stoked his love of music. Given his own prowess as a writer, it’s telling that he spent a quarter of the album on songs whose soulful resonance still gripped him fifty years later. His new material has a clear sense of nostalgia, but also a thankfulness for the here and now. He recalibrates his perspective, remembering to always value and enjoy life’s pleasures, and extols the virtues of people and places he’s loved and those that have loved him.
Winchester’s draft-induced emigration to Canada is captured in both the album cover, a parting gift to his mother in 1969, and the song “Ghost.†The latter reaches back to Winchester’s late teens, and alongside “A Little Louisiana†and “Never Forget to Boogie,†tells the story of his musical birthright. The album finally draws itself up to the inevitability of Winchester’s situation with the touching “Every Day I Get the Blues†and the contemplative closer, “Just So Much.†Winchester lived a songwriter’s life to the very end, allowing his questions and worries to wash over him, facing down fate and holding on firmly to sentiment without ever becoming maudlin. [©2015 Hyperbolium] 