A swirling flourish of strings whirls around a noir cocktail of stately country elegance of classic piano and brass flourishes, as a voice emerges from the stale smoke and dim lights equally trenchant resolve and raw ache. Daniel Romano, slightly behind the beat, offers a chivalrous promise of avengement to the man who broke a tender heart on "I'm Gonna Teach You."
Time is one thing the Welland, Ontario native Daniel Romano has a slippery relationship with. Not a retro preservationist, nor a post-modern cowpunk, the songwriter Robert Christgau described as having "a voice that's sometimes so deep it serves as its own mournful echo chamber" embraces classicism and sadness in its extremes to create something beyond nostalgia on If I've Only One Time Askin'. Whether it's the John Prine character sketchery of the miscasting romantic "Two Word Joe," the Laurel Canyon countrygrass – equal parts Neil Young a la Harvest and the Flying Burritos' Gilded Palace of Sin -- of "Strange Faces," featuring Caitlin Rose, or the accordion'n'fiddle heartbreak waltz "If You Go Your Way (I'll Go Blind)."
"I've been known to take some liberties in the sadness department," Romano admits. "Anything can be reality if you let it percolate in your brain... But you can't take it to a place where it has literally happened to no one. You see people, you hear people, you know people – and it's all there!"
All there, indeed. Romano, who got his start in punk bands before taking his songcraft into waters populated by French pop, Lefty Frizzell, '80s country, Leonard Cohen's grace and Bob Dylan's shape-shifting, casts a vast net. One to eschew labels, he created his own: Mosey.
"Mosey music is a study in contrasts. There's glitz and grit, reveling and wallowing, wretchedness and showmanship. Mosey music's pioneers wore their battered hearts on sequined sleeves."
Perhaps a fear of boredom or merely the insatiable need to create, Mosey is fired by Romano's serious musical restlessness. Continually seeking stimulation, he can talk about fuzz guitar solos on obscure Buck Owens records, various periods of Lee Hazelwood's creative output, Shel Silverstein's books and songs, especially the 1998 Old Dogs project written for Waylon Jennings, Mel Tillis, Bobby Bare and Jerry Reed – fluently as it happens.
That supple relationship to diverse influences gives Romano flexibility.
"The process is very similar to how (Country Music and Songwriters Hall of Famer) Harlan Howard would've written. When you get a good line, the song is pretty much done. At least for me. I have all these pieces of paper, and from there, the songs write themselves.
"Every time there's something new, it gets thrown into the coat pocket. Hopefully it's an entity and not a confused pile of papers. Sometimes," he continues, addressing the bumps, "you sit down and there isn't a line. That's when the songs are a little more ethereal. They're less blast, but even then three lines in, they're onto a life of their own."