A Ruby Returns
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“As we were folding, the whole alt-country thing was unfolding,” says Kessler today. The duo had started out playing subway stops for beer money, but before long they were playing clubs–primarily the eclectic Wrigleyville performance space Lower Links. Although their stripped-down, theatrical take on old-timey music seems to have little connection to the more rock-fueled side of the “insurgent” country scene, they unquestionably helped set the stage for Bloodshot by challenging the assumption that country was purely redneck music. “Jane and I were floored from the get-go that anyone wanted to listen to what we were doing, because country was so wildly unpopular when we started playing out,” Kessler says. But the Rubies had little success outside of Chicago, and by 1994 they felt they’d hit the wall.
Now, nearly four years later, she’s getting set to release her first recordings since the lone Texas Rubies album, Working Girl Blues, came out in 1993. Both The Salt of Your Skin, her solo debut, and Life of Regret, a four-song EP by her raucous honky-tonk quartet the Wichita Shut-Ins, will be released on May 9 on her own Melungeon Records, which she runs with the help of Shut-Ins singer and washboard player Lawrence Peters. Kessler says she hadn’t planned to start a label, but when she found no other takers for her work, the seed was planted. “When I was in the process of setting up the label it started to dawn on me that the foundations we were laying were big enough to support something bigger,” says Kessler. “I didn’t relish the idea of taking on all of the behind-the-scenes work on my own, but I’m finding that it’s not as intolerable as I thought it would be.”
To my ears most of the band’s work has worn surprisingly poorly. Tracks from Anodyne–made when Farrar was peaking and Tweedy was emerging as a genuine songwriting voice–still sound fresh, but the bulk of the collection made me wonder how such an average band spawned an entire movement. Earlier, less celebrated country-rock bands like Jason & the Scorchers, the Long Ryders, and the Jayhawks exuded far more personality.
