Mike Cullison is an Americana-traditional country artist from Old School Hermitage, Tennessee. He’s just released a double-track EP appropriately titled Two For The Road.
An Oklahoma native, Cullison developed his songwriting chops working with Dan Goodman, The Allman Brothers’ Johnny Neel and CSN’s Mike Stergis. He describes his sound as “roadhouse blues and country roots-rock” but has been influenced by early rock and roll, zydeco and cajun blues. Apart from the music, Cullison considers himself a lyric writer first and foremost: “The story and how it is told are very important to me.”
Cullison’s music career actually started at his retirement party from Bell Telephone after 32 years, which was also the release party for his first album Big American Car. He eventually moved to Nashville (“because that’s where the writers were”). Nowadays Cullison plays live shows across the United States and Europe, alone or with a group of friends.
The first song is titled “Comin’ To Me.” The music here sounds studio clean, and it may well be, but there’s a small audience applauding at the end so this is actually something of a live album. Cullison plays nicely tempered electric guitar and sings with classic country grit. His band includes pedal steel, bass, drums and maybe a second guitar. The band is super-glue tight with a great sound. Cullison weaves a tale of regret masked with tired bravado with evocative phrases like “down home country preacher,” “the motel round back from 233” and “my trusty bottle of gin.” The two solos begin with pedal steel, then switch to Cullison, whose playing style feels like slide without using a broken bottle top. The song gets more dramatic as it goes along, with “what’s coming to me” eventually leading to a man at the narrator’s door pointing a gun. There’s a section where the music drops out for the vocals that carries a bit of Johnny Cash menace.
“When We Lie Together” introduces mandolin to Cullison’s musical palette alongside the same mournful lap steel and acoustics. The feel of this song is somewhere between Merle Haggard and Gordon Lightfoot. In this song Cullison seems to accept that he’s doomed to a love that’s not always good for him: “We ought to run from the damage we could do / How can the stars stay away from the moon?” I especially love the tag line: “There’s heaven and hell when we lie together.” For fans of classic country this track should definitely hit the spot!