Album Review – Pony Bradshaw’s “Thus Spoke The Fool”

Reviews 25 Comments


#510 & #570.15 (Traditional country, Singer/Songwriter) on the Country DDS.

Shirking the stereotype that all country and roots music is cornpone and pithy—and that the American South in general is a culturally-bereft refuse pile of uncultured slack jawed yokels—North Georgia-native Pony Bradshaw has made it his personal conquest to reconstruct the romantic notions of the Southern vernacular, and use it to grace music whose audience will spill well beyond the region’s borders.

In this pursuit, Pony Bradshaw issues his latest album, and the third in a trilogy inspired by his home in north Georgia called Thus Spoke The Fool. Pony employs vocabulary that is vaguely familiar like a fading memory to construct stories, characters, and perhaps an underlying narrative that connects them all. The result compels the audience and rises nostalgia in the blood similar to other forms of country and roots music, but not through the conventional modes that utilize shortcuts and gimmicks to achieve this goal.

At the beginning of his conquest, Pony was faced with the obscurity that besets most anyone with a purity of purpose. But like the work of Faulkner, time has proven Pony’s efforts to be compelling and resonant with an increasing audience of appreciative and attentive listeners. Like children leafing through the archaic text of a book found in an old attic trunk, Bradshaw affords ample mysteries to unravel.

When it comes to the chapters of Thus Spoke The Fool, Pony perhaps has never been more on point with his application of depreciated language in a way that results in beautiful moments. Where in the early incarnations of the trilogy he was still learning how to get the mood and pentameters just right, the verses and choruses of Thus Spoke The Fool flow like a silent river. He’s become fluent through his immersion into this bygone tongue, as has much of his audience.


Pony is not trying to wallpaper over the realities of rural north Georgia with flowery language. He’s only trying to pay reverence to a people and a region who on the outside may seem uncouth and base, but hold a complexity and beauty beneath them, no matter how deep you must search to find it. And we’re not just talking about the rural White residents. As Bradshaw illustrates in the song “The Long Man,” he can capture the essence of the region’s original Cherokee inhabitants, and while using their sayings.

Perhaps Pony’s music has never been more better integrated with the writing in a way that feels symbiotic and cohesive. And Bradshaw’s voice has perhaps never been as confident as it is in moments of Thus Spoke The Fool. Fellow songwriter and fiddle player Rachel Baiman also played a key role in bringing the album to life.

At the same time, you struggle after subsequent listens through Thus Spoke The Fool to find the genuine “hit” like the first album in the trilogy (Calico Jim) had with “Sawtooth Jericho,” or the second one (North Georgia Rounder) had with “Foxfire Wine” and “Holler Rose.” But it’s still early. And while you’re fair to regard Bradshaw’s work as being mostly for advanced listeners, he’s proven to be quite the potent live entertainer too.

Throughout the trilogy, you waited patiently for Pony to broach perhaps the most bitter moment in the region’s history in detail. Though General Sherman’s march from Atlanta to the sea officially started just south of the north Georgia region, the memory still remains sharp throughout the state. As you would only expect Pony to do, he addresses the Confederate legacy with all the poetic skill and personal conscience he can muster in the album’s final song “Rebel.”

Though it’s heartening to see Pony Bradshaw finding support for such esoteric work, it’s fair to caution general audiences that it might not be for everyone. Sometimes you just don’t understand what these songs are about, and it’s not entirely your fault. But Pony’s found enough people to continue down this path of involved songwriting to the point where he’s now completed this trilogy, and forged a foundation from which to build a strong career to explore the Southern vernacular even further.

8.1/10

– – – – – – – – – – –

Purchase from Pony Bradshaw

Purchase from Amazon

© 2024 Saving Country Music

, ,