Tim Keegan Saved From Happiness
"Foreign Domestic" CD reviewed by David Hirsh
for Bluemood © June 2007

This review, like the cd, is dedicated to Grant McLennan. We also sorely miss him. The world of music shall forever remain a note short. Tim Keegan implies in the liner notes to Foreign Domestic, his latest release, that these songs represent 3 years (2001-2004) of discovering that there is no place like home. I believe he has put out a very strong concept cd or song cycle of this discovery. During those 3 years he lived in Nashville and Paris. His songs have always begun with his sense of musicality, interesting lyrics and his perfect voice combined with interpretive singing that he has developed over the years. For many years he performed off and on with Robyn Hitchcock, has appeared on several of his cds, and even appears in a song in the film Storefront Hitchcock. He played with Blue Aeroplanes, and led the band Departure Lounge. On close examination, Tim Keegan can be as introspective as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen or Joni Mitchell, with themes of despair or irony or joy as the moment dictates.

In Nashville he had a radio show that was broadcast over the internet. He often had as guests, alternative musicians. While he was in Paris he performed with Kid Loco and played on a cd of his called Kill Your Darlings.

From this history and what a musician may learn from being in Nashville and playing with Kid Loco, you might be led to think that this cd is a travelogue filled with the daring adventures of a rock star, or an electronica, modern alt-country mix. But in its own way it is a travel through the growth of the soul of an artist coming to terms with growing older, and incorporating what he learned into what he knows and already does best. That is to say the reason that there is no place like home is as Tim recognizes in Where the Flowers Grow and Old Man’s Tears, by the time you leave home you are already formed, and you cannot run away from yourself. What I discern, solely from listening to this cd, he has learned to do well, what he already does well, but he does it better. There are only two truly happy songs on this CD - Sweet Sweet Smile and From Up a Tree. Sweet Sweet Smile is probably about his child and From Up A Tree is about finding someone who can make you happy with a similar psyche; and up until that point from On A Good Day through You Make Me Sad through La Vie Normale through Old Man’s Tears, the protagonist is searching and not finding what can possibly make someone happy. You wander, you search, you find, but since you don’t know what it is in the end that can satisfy, you desire to wander, search and find, but you cannot stop the process. And then you get to From Up a Tree, and you wonder if Tim Keegan has found something to reveal in his next cd that he has not revealed here. Maybe he has not been saved from happiness, maybe this cd is just a few songs short. Everyone should go out and buy this cd to discover the story that Tim is telling and so that he will be compelled to release the next cd to continue the story for him and us.