Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down is the fourteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ry Cooder. It was released by Nonesuch Records on August 30, 2011, and written and produced by Cooder, who recorded its songs at Drive-By Studios, Ocean Studios, and Wireland Studios in California. He played various instruments for the project while working alongside studio musicians such as Flaco Jiménez, Juliette Commagere, Robert Francis, and Jim Keltner.
Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down features topical songs with socio-political subject matter about 21st-century America, including economic disparity, social injustice, politics, and war. Cooder pursued a more political direction with his songwriting, inspired by the Great Recession and protest songs of the past. Its music is rooted in Americana and incorporates traditional styles and musical language from historical sources such as country blues, tejano, and American roots music. The record has been noted by critics for its eclectic musical range, allegorical songs, working-class perspective, and Cooder's sardonic lyrics.
The album was a modest chart success in the United States and performed better in Europe. Cooder expressed disillusionment with the music industry in response to the record's relatively poor commercial performance. Critically, the album was a greater success, earning him widespread acclaim and comparisons to folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie. According to Slant Magazines Joseph Jon Lanthier, "the orchestrated indignation of [the album] incorporated a protean Greek chorus of economic victims and beat Occupy Wall Street to the punch by several weeks."
Background After an 18-year hiatus from solo projects, Cooder returned with a trilogy of sociopolitical, Southern California-themed albums, comprising Chávez Ravine (2005), My Name Is Buddy (2007), and I, Flathead (2008). The albums examined various disenfranchised peoples through humorous, scholarly lyrics and esoteric musical styles. After completing the trilogy with I, Flathead in 2008, Cooder worked on The Chieftains' 2010 album San Patricio.
Writing and recording
Cooder was inspired to record Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down by the Great Recession and past protest songs. In interviews prior to the album's release, Cooder expressed strong anti-Republican and anti-banker sentiments in discussion about the political and economic climate. Before conceiving the album, he wrote and recorded the song "Quicksand" in 2010, as a response to the controversy spurred by Arizona Senate Bill 1070 and other anti-illegal immigration measures in the United States. In an interview for The Australian, Cooder said of his decision to pursue a more political direction with his songwriting:
In early 2011, Cooder was inspired to write the song "No Banker Left Behind", and subsequently the rest of the album, by a headline about bankers and other affluent people who had profited from the bank bailouts and resulting recession during the late-2000s. In an interview with Kai Ryssdal on Marketplace, Cooder cited the song as the starting point for writing the album and stated, "'No Banker Left Behind' originated with a line from Robert Scheer's Truthdig blog. I read this pretty regularly, and when I saw this, this metric I thought 'no banker left behind.'" He compared the album's content to Woody Guthrie's songs about the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression and said of his own songs, "What I like in the idea of these songs is if you follow the logic of each tune — this happened and this happened and you can see that at the end, this is the result, you just didn't see it this way before, you never thought of Wall Street in terms of Jesse James and bilingual heft."
Recording sessions for Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down took place at Drive-By Studios in North Hollywood, Ocean Studios in Burbank, and Wireland Studios in Chatsworth, California. The album was written and produced entirely by Cooder, except "Lord Tell Me Why", which was co-written by session drummer Jim Keltner. Cooder also worked with vocalist Juliette Commagere, accordionist Flaco Jiménez, bassist Robert Francis, vocalist Arnold McCuller, and drummer Joachim Cooder, Cooder's son. Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down was mixed by Martin Pradler and mastered by recording engineer Bernie Grundman at his Hollywood studio Grundman Mastering. Most of the album was engineered in Pradler's living room.
Musical style Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Downs music is rooted in Americana and draws on a number of styles, including blues, folk, ragtime, norteño, rock, and country music. For the songs, Cooder adapted musical language from historical sources and incorporated styles from both North and South American traditions. In his interview on Marketplace, he explained his stylistic approach for Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, stating "to me, these musical styles and sounds are narratives as well. I mean everything about them — if it's an accordion, horns, the banda horns for the immigrant tunes — they all are part of the story. And you can see it then, you can imagine the Arizona border that's hot, 120 degrees in the shade, dusty. The banda horns are coming from some truck over there." According to him, musical settings for certain songs were decided based on their respective compositions, such as when "the words would come to me in ¾ time, that meant corrido, that means accordion; banda horns because they’re exciting."
Cooder wanted the music of each song to complement the stories in his lyrics and to serve as homages to particular traditional styles. Cooder said that he did not want to "over-think it" and said of his creative process for each song's distinct style, "It’s taken a long time, but it becomes natural to combine an idea you have or a story you want to tell with whatever seems conducive." Graham Reid of The New Zealand Herald writes that the music "refers to the dustbowl era, rural blues, Tex-Mex (with accordionist Flaco Jimenez) and old-time folk." The Observers Neil Spencer comments that it is "grounded in the blues, folk and Tex-Mex the guitarist explored in the 1970s, but its songs belong to modern times."
Lyrics and themes Lyrically, the album focuses on socio-political themes of power and its abuses, the struggle for democracy, the trials of the working class, and the goal of equality, with songs composed as either first-person narratives or allegories. The songs deal with contemporary subject matter and topics such as immigration legislation, the emotional and physical effects of war, the dubiousness of politics, social class and race division, and white flight. Cooder's songwriting is characterized by sardonic lyrics, satire, mordant humor, and wry observations on figures such as bankers, politicians, and militarists. Allmusic's Thom Jurek characterizes it as "overtly political" and comments that "the depth of Cooder's rage is quieter but more direct as the album draws to a close." According to Bud Scoppa of Uncut, the album expands on Cooder's previous trilogy of sociopolitical albums and their "scholarly but humour-laced examinations" and "arcane musical modes". Journalist Alec Wilkinson comments that "what [the album] shares with them is an indignation over the economic and ethical disparities of American life and the destructive and scoundrely meanness of the privileges given to the rich."
Nick Cristiano of The Philadelphia Inquirer writes of the lyrics, "Cooder takes deadly aim at rapacious bankers, warmongers, land barons, and the like, showing the devastating impact of their actions on ordinary folk", adding that "He does this in a manner that mixes the scrappy populism of Woody Guthrie with the first-person narratives of Springsteen in Steinbeckian Ghost of Tom Joad mode." Robin Denselow of The Guardian notes "bleak or thoughtful lyrics [set] against jaunty melodies" and "no elaborate narratives" in the songs, while interpreting the album's motif to be that of "a broken, divided society and the gap between rich and poor, but with the anger matched against humour." Posted version at Neil Spencer of Uncut calls Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down "an impassioned portrait of 21st century America and its injustices", adding that "like Guthrie, [Cooder] nails his targets with droll humour while empathising with society's underdogs."
Allmusic's Steve Huey asserts that the album "reache[s] all the way back to his earliest recordings for musical inspiration while telling topical stories about corruption — political and social — the erasure and the rewriting of American history, and an emerging class war." Peter Kane of Q compares it to Cooder's 1971 album Into the Purple Valley, which featured Dust Bowl-era songs, and writes that this album's "protest songs for today's messed-up world" are "sly and humorous". Philip Majorins of PopMatters compares the album to other songwriters' "substantial statements" about the American zeitgeist, including Randy Newman's Harps and Angels (2008), Paul Simon's So Beautiful or So What (2011), and Bob Dylan's Modern Times (2006). However, he distinguishes Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down as "an attempt at the existential, providing an everyman's view of struggle during economic downturn, class disparity, injustice, and abuse of power", calling him "a direct voice of protest, both musically and lyrically, that will not be mistaken for being impressionistic."
Songs The opening track "No Banker Left Behind" references the financial bailout of 2007 and criticizes bankers and government. Alec Wilkinson of The New Yorker writes that the song "ridicules the considerations extended to the prosperous men and women who grabbed everything not nailed down during the last few years." It features marching rhythms, mandolin and banjo riffs, and electric guitar. Cooder has described the song's rhythm as "a kind of clog-dance beat". "El Corrido Jesse James" is played in waltz time with a horn section and accordion by Flaco Jiménez. The lyrics express a fictitious narrative by American outlaw Jessie James in Heaven, who claims to have never "turned a family from their house" when he was a bank robber. He asks God for his "trusty .44" to persuade bankers to "put that bonus money back where it belongs". Cooder discussed the character's perspective in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today, stating:
"Quick Sand" is a shuffling rock song that addresses the plight of illegal immigrants to Arizona. It depicts six migrants travelling through extreme climates in the Sonoran Desert to reach Devil's Highway in an attempt to cross the Mexico – United States border. They journey from Tamaulipas and through the mountains along Devil's Highway. Partway into the journey, the migrants are abandoned by their coyote guide and subsequently lose one another one by one. They experience thirst, hunger, injury, and fear, culminating with the only two surviving migrants being turned away by a vigilante at the border. Cooder said of the route's background and the narrative in an interview, "[I]t's been a migrant trail for 200 years. People go out there and try to do it on foot, but if you make one mistake and go five minutes out of your way, you become disorientated and dehydrated. And they find these mummified bodies out there. The heat has just baked them through. And the people who live through it often refer to having a vision of the Virgin of Guadalupe flying overhead. This is a very common vision when the dehydration sets in."