Nelson, Joe D.
Iced Cherries
Joe D. Nelson (aka Jody Nelson) trades in a perverse Americana articulated via a novelist's eye for detail, a poet's love of the liminal, playful surrealism, and sci-fi morality. His characters are of this place yet are utterly mystified by their trappings. Some of them are amphibious. Others are lost to circumstance. There are cowboys confused by horses. A man in a "tap water suit." Nelson cut his songwriting teeth via his former outfit, Through The Sparks, a Birmingham, Alabama garage band. With his solo debut, 'Iced Cherries,' Nelson inverts his past techniques by abandoning electric guitars and ProTools in favor of deft fingerpicking on an acoustic guitar and recording live to analog tape. As for influences, one might hear shades of Bruce Cockburn, whom he recently covered on the latest volume of 'Imaginational Anthem' on Tompkins Square. More often than not, 'Iced Cherries' sounds like an unholy alliance of Fred Neil, Joe Pass, Thomas Pynchon, and David Berman. At its core, 'Iced Cherries' is a deconstruction of singer-songwriter tropes. He wrote a song in every key - and each of those songs slyly slaughters a sacred cow musically or lyrically. Sometimes both. Even the album cover is a wink. But these are folk songs in that all folk songs are of their time - and these are very weird times.