Darryl Holter’s New Album Rocks Hotel Café
Feb 20, 2009

Now that the Hotel Café has expanded, more people can cram into that nice little hole in the wall on Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood. Quite a few were on hand last Sunday night to hear songs from Darryl Holter’s new self-titled album.

Holter has never performed these songs before, but he’s seen a lot of life and knows how to make songs out of it. He does vocals and guitar on these folk-rock originals, all built up with strong country currents and blues underpinning. At their best, the songs bring to mind a sort of Dylan meets Springsteen meets Gram Parsons. This is Holter’s first CD, but his musicians are all top-shelf professionals and the large, partisan crowd enjoyed a tightly-scripted set of songs.

The audience couldn’t really hear the vocals on the first song because of sound problems. Too bad. “Should Have Seen It Coming” is one of the strongest tracks on the album, with haunting lyrics wrapped up in the pulsating pedal steel guitar work of Josh Grange (subbing for the legendary Greg Leisz). But about the time the song was finished the sound problem was corrected, and Holter and the guys were off and running.

Holter billed his song “I Know You” as the only rock song ever written about the famous French existentialist philosopher and writer, Simone de Beauvior. Of course most in the crowd had no idea who in the hell he was talking about. But the song fairly exploded off the stage, a bluesy, foot-stomping, four-chord rocker, bulked up with a killer guitar solo by Tim Young.

In “Gambler’s Holiday,” Holter tells the story of a guy who travels from Monte-Carlo to Las Vegas in search of his old lover. He hijacks her from the blackjack table, drives to the Grand Canyon, and proposes to her while overlook the canyon rim. Next came “Don’t Touch My Chevy,” a sort of paean to solid black 1950 automobile by the same name. This song recalls in a new, updated way that old rockabilly standard, “Blue Sued Shoes.” But while Carl Perkins said, “You can steal my liquor from my old fruit jar,” Holter sings “You can drink my Johnny Walker Blue and probably get away…But don’t’ touch my Chevy!” You get the idea pretty quickly, but the song is short and sweet with a pretty durable hook.

Julia Shammas Holter, a young composer with an album of her own (“Eating the Stars” on Human Ear Music), joined her father for back-up vocals on a couple of songs. This father-daughter thing worked pretty well from a chemistry standpoint and the crowd ate it up.

The set closed out with “The End of the Story, and a tour de force as three distinct strands of guitar work, Young’s electric guitar, Billy Mohler’s bass, and Holter’s old Martin acoustic, all converged in a raucous wall of sound to close out the show.

Holter’s distinctive vocals and the sharpness of the group’s delivery made the 45-minute set go by quickly. These are well-crafted, accessible songs with lyrics that make sense (reprinted in the CD insert). With his crack team of musicians, Holter has put together a very good first album. He says he is working on a second. Maybe that merits a return to the Hotel Café sooner rather than later.