Stand by your plow

Sometimes a band will come off so flawless onstage, it seems
unreal. Dig this: When Americana darling Stay the Plow finished up its recent set
at The Little Theatre Café, pumpin’ piano cat-in-the-hat Paul Nunes was gobsmacked.
He approached singer Nelle Porter-Jones.

“He couldn’t
believe the songs were originals,” Porter-Jones says. Nunes
told Porter-Jones he didn’t realize they were written by the band, “They’re
that good,” Porter-Jones recalls him saying.

“Well, why
would I go up and do bad ones?” Porter-jones says. She was initially put off by
the remark until she considered its sincerity. “It was probably the best
compliment I’ve ever been given,” she says.

Stay the
Plow arose from the ashes of Dang!, a tongue-in-cheek country outfit that some
people didn’t get.

“It was
supposed to be an ironic country band,” says Tim Clark, Stay the Plow rhythm
guitarist. The band leaned into the over-the-top aspects of country music with
“Aww shucks” hokum. But in the end the band began to morph into classic
country.

“And the
people who liked classic country stayed away in droves,” Clark says. “They
wanted to hear it exactly like they were used to hearing it. We brought a lot
of other elements and dynamics into it. But nobody was interested in hearing
the progressive twists that we put on it.” Twists like when Porter-Jones sang
“Stand By Your Man” like Pat Benatar.

Stay the
Plow, which is made up of Porter-Jones; Clark; Jim Conner on drums; Jeff Gilhart on lead guitar; and Dell Delray on bass, slugged
away as Dang! for 13 years before letting it dissolve and reemerge as Stay the
Plow in 2015.

“We were
like, ‘What are we going to do with this band?'” Clark says. “We liked the way
it sounded. We were happy with each other, it was drama free.”

Porter-Jones
isn’t so sure. “Were you in the same band I was in?” she says to Clark.

Clark had
been working with Porter-Jones, fleshing out her original material and putting
together some demos. They played them for the newly-formed Stay the Plow.

“So we
brought it to the band,” he says. “And everything we had developed with the
band, we applied to her songs. And it was great. We were really energized by
it. The response was better than when we played the familiar songs.”

The new
energy kept the band going now with some more cut in its strut. It was either
that or call it quits.

“It wasn’t a
question of throwing in the towel,” Clark says. “We just wanted to go in a
direction that was relevant. We were clearly struggling with relevancy. Being
Dang!, doing what we were doing, we had a lot of recognition but we had no
engagement.”

The new
material was the shot in the arm the band needed. “And Nelle’s songs are
exciting,” says Conner. “Lyrically, they’re very story-based. You can read the
lyrics like a story: beginning, middle, end. And they’re interesting topics,
like diving horses and carnival boys.”

You can see
the story her words paint on the song “Diving Horses.” “Diving Horses on the
pier / Look so small from way down here / Hey there mister, don’t make him fall
/ Though I paid my dime just like ’em all”

“I love
history. I love sepia,” Porter-Jones says. “‘Finding your way’ is a driving
component and a main ingredient in my songwriting as well.”

“Also a
little hope, a little remorse, a little longing, and trying to get out on the
other side,” Delray adds.

But no
irony. “I don’t think there’s any irony in the music now,” Porter-Jones says.

“Here’s
irony for ya,” Clark says while jerking his thumb in
Porter-Jones’s direction. “Irony in the fact that she’s my ex-wife.”

This article appears in Mar 14-20, 2018.