Album Review – Bobby Dove’s “Fortune Teller”
Classic Country (#510.1) and Americana (#570) on the Country DDS. AI = “Clean”
By taking on the the most challenging aspects of heartfelt songwriting from the folk and Americana realm, and combining them with a classic country disposition and influence, Bobby Dove once again creates a vibrant and enriching listening experience that reminds you why you’re such a dedicated music fan, and why you devote time to digging deeper than the surface to discover the best stuff.
To track down the musical legacy of Bobby Dove, you have to trek north to Manitoba, Canada, though there’s no assurance Bobby will be there when you arrive. Dove’s new album, and third overall called Fortune Teller is less about divination, and more of a travelogue of a touring musician trying to make their way in the world, and struggling to make sense of love, place, and purpose like so many of us.
The hard-charging “Trans Canadian Blues” could’ve been birthed by your favorite Outlaw country band from the lower 48. Bobby’s duet with the great Jim Lauderdale on “Did I Speak Too Soon” is traditional country greatness with those perfect little classic piano and steel guitar parts. The heartbreaking “This Time” is a great showcase of Bobby Dove’s voice and sense of melody wrapped in classic country greatness.
But Bobby is just as much motivated to make songs that are involved and that say something as ones that revive the country sounds of old. As Dove intimates in “Dreamt I Met John Prine,” looking up to those preeminent songwriters of the past, and seeking their guidance and inspiration is an important part of this musical exercise.
This is where the more involved melodies and more nuanced stories arise through songs like the vulnerable, reflective, and honest “Not Much of an Outlaw.” Combining poetic songwriting with country heartbreak results in the positively devastating moments of “Leaving Manitoba” that makes you feel every aching moment in the aftermath of love. “Soon the snow will cover up my path to get back home,” Dove sings.
As sad and personal as Fortune Teller is, it nonetheless makes for a good traveling/road record with all the motion and geography in the stories, aided by excellent instrumentation throughout orchestrated by Bobby and co-producer Aaron Goldstein. A song like “Loose Screws” has that rhythm of the highway behind it, with the guitar keeping your foot heavy on the pedal.
But moreover, Fortune Teller is about getting lost in the in-between, like coins between the couch cushions—in-between a sense of home and the call of the road, in between country and Americana, struggling to find your place in life, so never feeling settled anywhere.
“Stand between the railroad ties, and wonder, ‘Who am I?’ This disease that I have known, worsens by and by,” Bobby sings in the opening phrases of the final song “SALEM.” Whether you ever truly find yourself in life, you’re happy to find the music of Bobby Dove due to how it speaks to you intimately about the open questions and restlessness we all feel in unsettled moments, assuring you that you’re not alone.
8.2/10
Purchase on Bandcamp