Steve Gunn’s blonde, acoustic Martin guitar got cracked in transit when he flew JetBlue to the West Coast in November to play some new music from his forthcoming record, The Unseen In Between. Some friends in Los Angeles hooked him up though: they took his six-string to a specialist who was able to restore it to playing condition even if a scar was still visible. Steve, though stoic, was still mildly steamed about the mishap.
One of the songs he played that night on his mangled-then-repaired Martin was “Stonehurst Cowboy,” a solemn tribute to his late father. Gunn’s version of folk music, though not bright per se, usually lives in the lighter shades of dusk, his low voice kind of like the pinkish haze on the horizon. But “Stonehurst Cowboy” is chillier, darker, and much slower. As a eulogy, that makes perfect sense, but there is something else going on.Told from the perspective of Gunn’s dad, “Stonehurst Cowboy” is ballad/biographical account about revisiting a familiar place when your world has changed completely. For Gunn’s dad this happened after he and many of his neighborhood friends got drafted during the Vietnam War. For those who made it back, the same sunny streets they grew up on adopted darker hues: “Dear old house on 69th street looks the same—trees are strong, faces are gone,” Gunn sort of winces as he sings and plucks his guitar. The song is Gunn at his most isolated and its very disarming to hear if you’re familiar with his more mellowed work. “Tonight, I’m past the world,” he sings.