Blue And Gray: Poco's Trip Through A Land Torn Apart...

So, after singing the praises for the Eagles' Desperado, here's the second album in a series of country rock albums depicting life in the U.S. in the 19th Century, we go back to one of the OG's of country rock, who by the time they made this album were anything but. Poco might've been one of the first bands playing country rock, but by the time they brought out Blue And Gray, they were anything but. Hell, they weren't even Poco anymore. After the band went on indefinite hiatus when Tim Schmit left to join the Eagles (with the well-wishes of the band, who all felt they had played out the string with Poco). But Paul Cotton and Rusty Young liked to work with each other and decided to continue as The Cotton-Young band, recruiting a new rhythm section and a bit later on keyboard player Kim Bullard. But ABC Records only wanted to release their record under a known name (I.P. isn't just a key word of the last decade or so!), so Poco was reborn. 

The band's first album, Legend, was an instant hit, the first of Poco's long and storied career, and for the first time the band had hit singles: "Crazy Love" and "Heart Of The Night". A quick follow-up, Under The Gun, stiffed however. After trying in vain to replicate Legend, Poco then did something totally unexpected: devisiong a concept album about the Civil War that tore America apart. Blue And Gray was born. 

Young and Cotton never were more than serviceable lyricists, so don't expect any particular insights or authenticity from the lyrics here, everything is kept very vague, with numerous allusions to trouble and conflict brewing in the near or far distance, but little in the way of specifics. Which, given the pair's limitations is probably for the better. There is, however, a fairly subtle concept here that is worth pointing out: Both alternating songwriters represent an opposing point of view and is playing the role of one of the two belligerents, but with a twist: Rusty Young wasn't a Southerner - born in California and raised in Colorado - but he takes over the perspective of the Gray. Paul Cotton, however, was technically a Southerner, born in Fort Rucker, Alabama, but was raised in Illinois, so he is taking the prespective of the Blue. 

Generally speaking, Cotton's songs hold together the best as a sort of loose travelogue of a Northern soldier lost in war-torn enemy territory, a kind of Cold Mountain fifteen years before the novel. Like Young's Southerner(s?), Cotton's Northern soldier says goodbye to his loved one in "Please Wait For Me", then when we catch up to him in this version of Blue And Gray, he is injured and deep in the land of the enemy, making his way through the bayous of Louisiana in the hopes of catching a northbound ship in "Streets Of Paradise". Later, this soldier encounters a single enemy soldier and they both prepare themselves to shoot out who will survive the confrontation in "Sometimes (We Are All We Got)". And then we're leaving him still hoping to catch that ship up north and hoping to go "Down On The River Again". 

Rusty Young's songs tend - as they usually would - towards the nostalgic and sentimental, with not one but two songs about the romantic farewells to the troops marching of into war. But whereas "Glorybound", the opener of Blue And Gray captures the optimism of the troops, by the time of the title song Young's narrator realizes that it will not all just be fun and glory: "Baby, now something ain't right / clouds of thunder roll into sight". Still, "The Writing On The Wall" seems to have the soldiers as following a higher calling. Young's groovy and slightly spooky"Widowmaker" is one of his best compositions of the period, but seems to come from another album altogether. Generally speaking, they are so vague in their lyrics that half of them could be about something different than the Civil War. 

But, you know, give them points for trying. Poco had realized that they were at somewhat of an impasse: Under The Gun, despite having a good title song, didn't nearly make the numbers that Legend and its hit singles "Crazy Love" and "Heart Of The Night" did. So Poco decided to go for something more ambitious, even if it didn't quite hold together, mostly due to Young's inability to hold up his end of the deal. Cotton's songs are not only the better compositions, they are highlights, because they bring back hints of Poco's classic country rock sound that were completely missing from their last two albums. Young brings out mandolin, banjo and dobro for three of Cotton's four songs, which helps make them the highlights here, particularly "Sometimes (We Are All We Got)", which is as good as anything the real Poco produced from 1968 to 1977. 

There were two issues with the original album: One was a poor flow with haphazard and not particularly successful sequencing. The two rather slowish Young numbers that opened the album made for a not very succesful start. Inserting Cotton's "Please Wait For Me" in between "Glorybound" and "Blu And Gray" worked wonders, then I rejiggered the rest for a better listening experience. The other probelm was that even for a scant ten-track album , the group couldn't come up with enough songs that fit the concept, so Young just put "Here Comes That Girl Again", an insipid ballad on there, that on this improved version of the album quickly gets shown the door. Instead I inserted the only track worth mentioning of Gray And Blue's successor Cowboys And Englishmen, an awful contract-filler album full of mediocre covers that made Poco sound like a bar band on a slowly tuesday night. Besides all the awful covers, Rusty Young at least has the good sense to bring out one original song, the medley of the old-timey "Ashes"  - which alwas was quite repertitive - and the sprightly country instrumental "Feudin'". The latter is now part of this version of Blue And Gray, with its title fitting the theme and, at least in my mind, illustrating the feuds that would pop up in the rural border regions of the war, and now had an 'official' reason/excuse for existing. Interestingly, it won Poco the only Grammy of their career for 'Best Instrumental Performance'. 

So, this OBG version of Blue And Gray is, if nothing else, an improvement on the original, and an interesting, if pretty much totally fogotten, look at a soft rock band trying to get ambitious. I'm not trying to oversell this album as some sort of fabulous forgotten treasure, but it's an album well worth hearing, and arguably the best of the band's extremely checkered 80s releases. Whether you're a history or Civil War buff or not, there's enough good stuff here to follow Poco on their trip into the 1860s...

P.S.: The music for the other two Poco Alternate Albums on this blog have recently been updated, so if you want to go on a Poco listening spree...