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Merle Haggard’s “Shelly’s Winter Love” is a more conventional duet, but Kirchen opts to get out of the way as Lowe and Carrack blend their burnished voices on it in the classic Everly Brothers manner. “The last thing I’m gonna do is get up and sing with Paul Carrack and Nick Lowe,” Kirchen says with a laugh. “It’s not gonna happen. That song just marched up to second position on the album…The way those two guys go toe-to-toe is just sublime.” In all three of these instances, and others as well, Kirchen chooses to hide in plain sight, doing what he does best—subtly and masterfully playing the role of lead guitarist, every ringing note brilliantly serving both the singer and the song.
The album, produced and recorded by Proper’s Paul Riley, was tracked at London’s Specific Sound, with additional recording done all over the map, from Austin to Vancouver to Bill’s home setup in Maryland. “We sent the tapes of ‘Man in the Bottom of the Well’ to Vancouver for Elvis to put his vocals on, but the rest of the time, we traveled around the country and collected those people,” Kirchen explains. In each case, the guests recorded their parts on top of basic tracks laid out by the core band of Bill, drummer/singer Jack O’Dell, bass player Johnny Castle and keyboardist/guitarist/vocalist Austin de Lone, the former leader of seminal pub-rock band Eggs Over Easy.
On his first Proper album, Hammer of the Honky Tonk Gods, Kirchen saw his challenge as “trying to write some songs that were more from the heart and closer to the bone. I wanted to let go of my stance of writing attitude-laden truck-driver songs—I’ve done enough of those to last a lifetime. But, as with any of my albums, I love so many kinds of music that I haven’t figured out a way to focus down and just do one specific thing.” To which we happily say, vive le difference. - continued
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