A riveting refrain

The problem with clichés is that their easy familiarity often comes to hide any underlying insight. Preaching to the choir may be easier than converting the unenlightened, but both require specific talents.

Canadian writer Ray Robertson, author of nearly 20 works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, returns with Dust, a work that explores and celebrates a number of influential, if not always well-known, musicians. This accessible book will appeal to both musical experts and neophytes.

Dust is a compelling blend of music criticism and biographical and historical storytelling, a thematic followup to 2016’s Lives of the Poets (With Guitars). Traversing much of the 20th century and with little concern for conformity to musical genre, Robertson shares his love of music and the often-iconoclastic performers who pushed their art into new territory. His goal along the way is not to simply share interesting anecdotes, but instead to develop a shared experience of music with readers.

Chapters aren’t tied by chronology or style. There is blues, rock, jazz and country — sometimes within the same portrait. One third of the musicians profiled died before age 30; addictions, mental health struggles and poverty abound. Yet for every Nick Drake, dead at 26, there is a Muddy Waters or the Staple Singers, who lived long, if not always unchallenging, lives.

Robertson has a particular talent at finding the most fascinating entranceways into his subjects, as is especially evident in chapters on Alex Chilton and Duane Allman. He ties their lived experience with the music that survived them and, in doing so, both story and song are reciprocally enriched.

Respect for his subject matter is apparent in the way Robertson is able to balance the often mercurial and unprofessional leadership of Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart, with his intuitive, obsessive reinterpretation of familiar musical conventions and ideas.

Nico is never reduced to a spiraling drug addict; her substance-use challenges are told even-handedly while emphasizing her relentless efforts to translate an interior experience into the languages of harmony, melody and atmosphere.

Unsurprisingly for an authority with a substantial catalogue, Robertson is in command of a distinct, approachable voice. He welcomes readers into a set of compelling narratives, sharing his perspectives while leaving space for the readers’ own reflections. Opinion never comes at the expense of dogmaticism; critique may be occasionally sharp, but is never mean and often leavened by a well-timed sense of humour.

The primary frustration with Dust is that it is unabashedly consistent about what it does and does not attempt to communicate. It’s not an exhaustive history of any of its subjects, which leaves a number of somewhat frustrating holes. The Staple Singers were a family musical group, but the matriarch of the family quickly disappears from the story. We are told that a Ouija board session was disturbing to blues phenom Duster Bennett, but the story peters out without further detail. Even a later attempt at exorcism feels unconnected and inconclusive.

Ariel Gordon’s Fungal, reviewed in these pages last year, shone in the way it took a familiar activity — walking in urban environments — and made it new and exciting. Dust is particularly outstanding in a similar fashion: it opens familiar music in surprising and enriching ways while encouraging further exploration.

Dust contains enough diversity of time, place and subject to provide something of interest to nearly any reader. Stylistically, it’s a work that can be read in fits and starts, though the temptation to read just one more chapter is difficult to resist. One word of advice: you’ll want to have a way to play some of this music as you read.

Jarett Myskiw dedicates this review to Ken Wonko, who knew good music.