Brent Cobb
Among the 12 views of life in the South featured on producer Dave Cobb’s ambitious Southern Family compilation is “Down Home,” a tune performed by his younger cousin Brent Cobb. One of two songs on the album co-written by the younger Cobb (the other was recorded by Miranda Lambert), “Down Home” describes a Sunday in the country from dawn to dusk, kids dutifully feeding the hogs and chickens before heading off to spend the day fishing for yellow belly and bream. Nothing much happens, there’s no dramatic scene, just gratitude and an amiable, bluesy groove. “It ain’t just a good place for you to rest your head,” he sings in the chorus. But this vision of honoring one’s rural roots offers sanctuary and identity in the face of urban expansion and anonymity.
It’s one theme that continues through Brent Cobb’s new album Shine On Rainy Day, produced by Dave Cobb and released on the suddenly-everywhere producer’s Low Country Sound imprint under Elektra Records. A native of tiny Ellaville, Ga., Cobb didn’t meet his cousin Dave — who grew up outside Savannah — until they were both adults, at a family funeral. Upon hearing some of his cousin’s songs, Dave persuaded Brent to come to L.A. to work on music, but Brent returned home within a few months. Not long after, his acquaintance and fellow Georgia native Luke Bryan asked Brent to come to Nashville and write songs. In addition to releasing a well-reviewed self-titled EP in 2012, Brent has enjoyed a series of cuts for Bryan (“Tailgate Blues”), Lambert (“Old Shit”) and Kenny Chesney (“Don’t It”), among others.
Though he’s clearly doing quite well for himself in Music City, Cobb seems to long for the simplicity of life back in Georgia on Rainy Day. In the waltzing “South of Atlanta,” he sprinkles in rich details that make his home environment spring to life in full color and three dimensions: the loblolly pines growing tall, the smell of honeysuckle suffusing the air and trustworthy people who rejoice in snap peas and cornbread. “Lord, when I die, let’s make a deal,” he pleads. “Lay me down in that town where time stands still.”
Likewise, he sounds alienated on “Country Bound,” knowing that he doesn’t quite belong in his current situation and making a decision to get away. It’s the only song on the record Cobb didn’t have a hand in writing, but he’s still deeply connected to it — it was written by his father and uncle while they were spending Christmas in Cleveland, Ohio, watching snow accumulate in a way they’d never saw in Georgia.
Cobb’s voice is soft and sweet, with surefooted hints of soul, though not given to flights of showy prowess like Chris Stapleton, and it sounds comfortable blanketed by Dave Cobb’s uncluttered production. It’s almost conversational, like standing on a front porch and listening while he spins a yarn that may or may not be wildly exaggerated. It doesn’t take a huge leap to imagine someone like Luke Bryan or Jason Aldean taking several of these songs to the country charts, but the bombastic, arena-ready production they prefer — with churning guitars and thunderous drums — would overwhelm the subtle wonders of Cobb’s voice. The vintage warmth of his cousin’s production likely situates Cobb closer to Americana than contemporary country, but there are nods to California country and AM gold throughout.
He also doesn’t do anything radically different with his compositions compared to many hits currently on the radio: He writes about sitting on porches, driving country roads, creek banks, just generally being Southern. But where Cobb’s peers puff out their chests to show their rural pride, Cobb sounds like he’s grappling with an existence that’s forever separated him from the place he’d most like to be. In album opener “Solving Problems,” he takes an aimless ramble around Nashville with a buddy, trying (successfully) to graft the art of deep, agenda-free conversation onto his present life.
These fully realized visions of home extend to Cobb’s characters, who meet with struggles and success on a real human scale. He turns self-critical on the breakup song “Diggin’ Holes,” dishing out one hilariously memorable line after another about an assortment of backbreaking underground professions — comic allusions to describe his romantic mishaps. “I oughta be a coal miner, Lord knows I’m good at diggin’ holes,” he sighs, as he’s mocked by a flurry of cheerful guitar arpeggios. The murky, bluesy “Let the Rain Come Down” gives an alternate view, where the main character feels cursed by her departure — the absence of rain and his dying crops reflect his own devastated psyche.
Cobb looks into another time-honored rural tradition on “Down in the Gulley.” “Well, my granddaddy was a good man, no matter what the papers say,” he says in the novel-worthy opening line of this gripping moonshine narrative. Details matter here too, the ominous minor-key progression setting the mood for talk of secrets in the pecan trees and staying one step ahead of the law to make a few bucks in hard times. The character portrayed in album closer “Black Crow” isn’t so fortunate — he’s wasting away in jail after robbing a corner store. Fellow Dave Cobb associate and storyteller Jason Isbell adds some sizzling slide licks to this tale of doom.
The mournful and masterful title track strikes a balance between these dueling forces of despair and hope. Cobb sings from the point of view of someone confronting an avalanche of loss, unsure how to soldier on. “Ain’t it funny how a little thunder will make a man start to wonder, should he swim or just go under?” he asks. But he locates the tiniest sliver of hope, or something vaguely close, praying that this gathering storm in his life will uncover a few bright spots in its aftermath.
It’s easy to be skeptical of his suddenly strengthened faith — after all, things really might not work out. But one gets the sense that if a real-life person enduring these trials is surrounded by the generous, caring people Cobb describes in his songs, he’ll come out of it OK.
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