Band: Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl
Genre: Pop Folk / Alternative Pop / Experimental Folk
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No joke. There I was, about to enter one of my favorite local pubs for a drink, when I come into these two. Amy Ross, crooning on the stage behind an old electric piano like a ghost from WWII, with playmate Derrick Ross, with a soft and humble focus, accompanying on guitar. All in all, this sort of thing is not an entirely unfamiliar site in Arizona, but the sound these two made was downright classic. I felt like I had stumbled into an old jazz club, but the sound itself, however familiar, was still ... new. A perfect border between the old and the electronic; between the sepia tones and wide-eyed images of the twenties and thirties (and earlier) and the mad, simmering energy of today’s indie pop folk scene.

Amazingly enough, information on the background of the duo, called Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl, seems a little scarce, even though I spent a little while talking to Derrick during and after the show, and even came home with a CD of my very own to write up this review. Perhaps being in bar, I didn’t really consider conducting an interview.

Performing fairly regularly in the Phoenix area, Bisbee, Arizona’s Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl are the perfect compliment to the blurring musical genre lines of today’s newer songwriters. With their debut CD (self titled), the playful and rocking sounds of Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl are both colorful and childlike (in a whiskey drinking sort of way), with lyrical abstractions bordering on the psychedelic and exhilarating changes you can’t help but fall into.

The sound of Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl can best be described by trying to imagine your favorite modern indie folk songstress being sent back in a time capsule to the depression and teaching the jitterbuggers the meaning of indie music. The true throwback here is mainly in the spirit and the instrumentation (as well as the implementation on a few of these tunes). Lyrically, the songs themselves paint pictures of playful oddities and dream edges. This is the stream of consciousness stuff that caused most of us to fall in love with Nick Drake and Tori Amos. While the old-timey fusion is definitely at play here, you can’t miss the obvious rock and alternative influences – lyrically, vocally, and even at times in the strum, pacing and meter of guitarist Derrick Ross’ accompaniments and backing compositions. The overall setting and tone of the Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl album boils down to a current nostalgia, filled with romance, honest curiosity, and childlike playfulness.