Together And Alone is the debut album by The Kearns Family who are from the High Mojave Desert where they are based in a homestead in Landers and record at the solar powered Goat Mountain Studio. The duo of Pat and Susan Kearns have over the years played with among others Victoria Williams, The Reverberations, Anna Phylactic & The Shocks, Yvonne Champagne and London And The Looks and have hopefully survived the wild fires unscathed.
The album opens with The Dust that reworks an early David Bowie tune, giving it new lyrics for a burnished country rumination on why The Dust keeps coming back.
Bandito has the spirit of Charles Bronson's harmonica whistling through the intro, to this Green On Reddish tale of the old Bandito whose been on the trail long enough to have run dry, just trying to make the next watering hole before he totally dehydrates.
The Old Days spent sipping on a Pabst Blue Ribbon in the sun wondering what their dad would do to them, putting them back in the saddle when they fell of bikes, full of childhood memories over chiming acoustic guitar memories of dad being around will never leave them.
You Got No Claim To The Mine has a dark western feel on the old gold trail, panhandling hoping to strike a huge claim, without getting cheated out of his new found fortune by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies who would love this dark twisted tune.
Daytime Moon is high in the sky, you sit watching the cowboys riding across the almost mirage like landscape, they make their way slowly across the sparse arid landscape, picking up amigos in the least likely places, hellhounds on your trail once more.
The Funny Thing About Keep Moving is slowly evoking blasted memories of childhood idyllic behaviour, before losing it and going wild, drifting across the states on the road to who knew where, looking for some place to rest his hat for a while, before ending up on the run a gun for hire.
Charlie joins a long line of songs about dear old Charlie, this one makes clear he's always high and drinking, staring at the bottom of one more glass, he may be heaven bound but he's lived his life as plangent tones make clear, he ain't gonna say goodbye, he'll just be gone one day.
That's Not What I Thought It Would Be is for one of those long trips to see something that turns out to be completely different to what you expected, this reminds me of visiting Stobs Pyramids in Bulgaria a place that may have similar terrain to parts of the Mojave Desert.
Love Will Win In The End almost feels like it should be sung by Porter Waggoner, the love they share will not have the happy ending he is hoping for, no matter how many times he tells her that love Will Win In The End.
Killing The Blues one note at a time, the bleak blasted world is so dark not even the blues can survive. Slowly carefully making plain how far things have gone not even the harmonica can save them now.
The album closes with When The Nights Are Cold you can cuddle up together to gaze at the stars once more, this is an old school late night love ballad for all the pale horse riders out there.
Find out more at https://thekearnsfamily.bandcamp.com/album/together-and-alone https://www.facebook.com/pat.kearns
