kelly pardekooper

You can take the boy out of Iowa but…

You might call Kelly Pardekooper’s Haymaker Heart the musical equivalent of a mid-life crisis. Not only does his fourth album represent the most creative stretch of his career, it’s release caps a tumultuous year for the 37-year old Iowan. Over the course of 2004, Pardekooper got divorced, sold his house, hit the road and left the Iowa City music scene, where he’s been a fixture since his university days.

He’s made a fresh start in Nashville - not the Nashville, he hastens to add, of Music Row, publishing deals and songs pitched to Tim McGraw, but the funkier East Nashville of garage studios, bohemian bars and indie rock. It’s the sort of neighborhood where a musician who plays the clubs at night might support himself by painting houses by day (as Pardekooper does).

He moved there at the invitation of his friend and occasional producer/guitarist Teddy Morgan, who suggested this might be a better, or at least warmer place to take stock of his life and see what’s next. “Teddy said that East Nashville was probably not the Nashville that I had in my head”, Pardekooper says, “I made this leap of faith more for personal than musical reasons.”

Yet his artistry has clearly reaped the benefits of that year of upheaval. With his life up for grabs, Pardekooper pushed his music past his comfort zone as well, venturing past alt-country convention and what he calls “the train beat from hell” of his previous releases.

The album opening “Not in Iowa” (ironically recorded in Iowa) serves as an evocative swan song to his native state, with sinuous atmospherics that suggest a spaghetti-western shootout between Dire Straits and Calexico. A raspy narrative relates a murder from the perspective of the corpse, to the serenade of Dave Moore’s accordion.

“Where my previous album “House of Mud” was recorded in four days with the same band, this one was recorded over the entire year of 2004, and I used about every guest musician in Iowa City,” he explains. “I’m not getting rich, obviously, so one of the great freedoms I have is to make any kind of record I want.”

It’s the kind of freedom Kris Kristofferson famously defined as “nothing left to lose,” and it inspired Pardekooper to go for broke. Over the course of thirteen “official” cuts and seven “bonus” tracks, Haymaker Heart surveys a soundscape that extends from the propulsive rock of “Wild Love” to the hard-core honky tonk of “Just Shoot Me” to the stream-of-consciousness broadsides of “Folk This” and “21st Century Trailer Park” to the pop harmonies of “Too Late”. Pardekooper justifies the range of what amounts to a double album with songwriting that is as focused as the music is expansive.

Though Pardekooper didn’t pick up the guitar and start writing songs until his early 20s, his formative musical influences came from the record collection of his “hippie” parents - CCR, The Band, Buffalo Springfield and the like. He later embraced not only the rawer aggression of The Clash, but the DIY ethic of the punk era. He earned a degree in communication from the University of Iowa, where he attended on a pole-vaulting scholarship.

Pardekooper is issuing Haymaker Heart on his own Leisure Time Records (after two previous releases on Iowa City’s Trailer Records), and he handles his own management, booking, and publicity. While he’s yet to establish much of a stateside following outside of Iowa, where his Devil’s House Band remains fondly (if a little drunkenly) remembered, Europe has been quicker to embrace Pardekooper. A late winter tour through the Netherlands and Germany followed the ascension of Haymaker Heart to the top of the Euro-Americana chart (above such stalwarts as Alison Krauss and Iris DeMent). Apparently his name - which means “horse buyer” in Dutch - doesn’t sound as funny to Amsterdam fans, who have embraced him as a prodigal son.

“In Europe I have a label, distribution, a publicity company, and a booking agency,” he says. “I have the same booking agent in Amsterdam as Jay Farrar and the Drive-By Truckers. I tell him (the agent) that in America there is no comparison between what those guys are doing and what I’m doing. And the agent just says. ‘Well, they like you here.’”

As for America, “I’m in that netherworld where a lot of musicians are,” he acknowledges. “This is a lot more than a hobby, but not quite a full time career. I’m really passionate about it and I like all the elements of what I do. I enjoy the recording, I really like playing live and I love the songwriting.”

And if Tim McGraw should decide to cut one of his songs? “I don’t have any philisophical issue with that,” he says with a laugh. “If somebody wants to record my songs it could give me a break from house painting so I could write some more.”

(Memo to Tim McGraw: Pardekooper’s “Draw the Line” is a hit just waiting to happen. And there’s even a harmony part for Faith.)

- Don McLeese

- Don McLeese

Kelly Pardekooper’s opening tune “Not to Iowa” has a dark, moody tone to it that is somewhere between Tarbox Ramblers, The Mavericks and Handsome Family. The singer nails the niche format to a tee on the first song with a bit of bolero mixed with accordion. He opts for a rowdier roots rock on the gorgeous “Tell Me (You’re the One)” that starts slowly before picking up steam while “Draw the Line” follows a similar framework — a old-time, dusty country-tinged that features Amy Finders providing sweet Margo Timmins-esque harmonies. When he goes down in tempo, he is better, especially during the honky-tonkin’ “Just Shoot Me”. However, the Isaak-like effort on “Wild Love” is a twist, but not really a great one. Nor is the softer, polished vibes on “Too Late” although this one is somewhat easier on the ears. Fans of Milton Mapes (relatively unknown but oh my word underrated band) would enjoy “Drinking Alone Again” that is rough and surly around the edges. The sleeper could be the catchy and to-the-point ditty “21st Century Trailer Park” that is a toe-tapper, as is the Blue Rodeo-ish “Down”. The highlight is the closing “Take Me 2 My Home” which a pure Americana tune that builds and builds.
— Jason MacNeil
- Jason Macneil