Record Reviews
by FFWD Staff
October 3, 2002

MARY LEE'S CORVETTE
Blood on the Tracks
KOCH/ Bar None Records

·And the prophet said that the daughter of a Whitefish, Montana drive-in theatre operator shall steal off to the Big Apple and record a live reworking of Dylan's classic divorce album. And it was so. And it was good. And it was so f***ing good.

Pity the music industry, and curse it as well. For every scrubbed up boy band taking anti-puberty pills to prolong their fad, for every paper doll cut-out in danger of capturing more headlines with her navel than her lyrics, for every metric tonne of paint pots and makeup and made up careers, there is a Mary Lee Kortes.

And while industry bigwigs and bankers scratch their heads and bemoan the loss of sales and curse Napster, CD burners and fickle audiences, music fans - the ones immune to hypnotism by MTV, those who will not be hoodwinked by a soft parade of pre-fab albums, those who cannot be bought by nice prices and dicey surprises - those fans, against all odds, still get excited when they lift up the industry's skirts and find the likes of Mary Lee's Corvette.

Kortes formed the band upon her arrival in New York, and soon released the band's self-titled debut, an unassuming two-track recording that ended up on the year-end Top 10 list of the editor of Billboard Magazine. This recording of Blood on the Tracks was also the work of coincidence, not calculation. Musician-producer Eric Ambel (Roscoe's Gang) answered the phone and yelled to Kortes, "You wanna do Blood on the Tracks at one of those classic nights at Arlene's (Grocery)?" After three days of learning harmonica, Mary Lee and Co. tossed the soundman a cassette and took to the stage.

The results of the session are stunning - an album on which simplicity and serendipity dance to a serenade of past pains, where the ashes of a fire long since cold are sifted for meaning and fed again into the flame of passion. Kortes has as many highway miles in her voice as Lucinda Williams,as much wisdom in her tone as Mary Gauthier and her style is as indelible as Marianne Faithfull's. And while Rolling Stone's record guide crucified Dylan's band for being below par on the original album, this unit flows and jangles, coasting on organ and harmonica that sear and soar.

Where they could have tripped and sank while treading over such sacred musical quicksand, instead Mary Lee's Corvette has decorated this old path with new flowers.