Tag Archives: Country

Tracy Lawrence: The Rock

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tracylawrence_therockSolid album of inspirational country music

After a string of hit singles and albums with Atlantic throughout the 1990s, the label’s country division was closed. He found continued success on Warner Brothers and DreamWorks, but in 2006 he started his own Rocky Comfort imprint. The typical arc for a country star of Lawrence’s vintage would be continued success at smaller live venues, and little or no commercial reaction to his indie releases. But Lawrence’s first self-released album, For the Love, worked its way to #6 on the country chart and spun off three singles, including the #1 “Find Out Who Your Friends Are.” The latter was the slowest climbing chart topper in the history of the Billboard singles chart, taking forty-one weeks to achieve the top spot. Lawrence followed up with the holiday album All Wrapped up in Christmas, but its title track, limited to holiday play, fell shy of the country top forty.

This third release on Rocky Comfort is Lawrence’s first album of inspirational country music. Lawrence sings songs of praise, such as the opening prayer of thanks, “Dear Lord,” but the meat of the album explores how faith intertwines with every day life. He sings of evolving past bad habits, petty bitterness and destructive behaviors to lead a more productive life on Earth. He draws a moving allegory between Jesus and those around you whose dedication you take for granted, and ultimately draws upon his faith to keep going from day to day. A pair of songs, “The Book You Never Read” and “The Rock,” are voiced by inanimate objects (a family bible and a foundational church stone, respectively), providing multigenerational views of faith and worship.

The rocking “Jesus Come Talk to Your Children” is a plea for explanations of war and natural disaster, but its suggestion that “politics and fear and hate create the great divide” misses the irony of fundamentalist religious beliefs at the root of many of the world’s largest conflicts. That said, Lawrence offers his inspirational convictions in good faith; the only proselytizing here is by virtue of good examples rather than calls for the lost to straighten up and find Jesus. The album’s messages will appeal strongly to the faithful, but the welcoming tone also makes this interesting to non-Christians. Best of all, Lawrence is still producing music that sounds as good as anything he released in the ’90s. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses: Roadhouse Sun

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ryanbingham_roadhousesunPreternaturally weary and wizened country-rock

Ryan Bingham sounds more road-weary and wizened than can scarcely be imagined for a twenty-eight year old. He’s a hoarse-voiced troubadour in the mold of Dylan and Earle, a rocker in the sing-song vein of Willie Nile and Steve Forbert, a rousing melodist ala Bruce Springsteen, and a dusty Westerner (born in New Mexico, but raised in rural Texas) whose roots also touch John Mellancamp’s heartland. Like fellow Texan Jack Ingram’s early days touring the state’s elaborate network of bars and dance halls, Bingham displays an unbridled urgency to communicate with each performance. The provenance of his gravel-stained voice includes an early exit from parental supervision and hard years of independent living on the rodeo circuit. With such experiential riches, you’d expect Bingham’s songs to dig into emotional pain, fate, self-reliance, resurrection, hard work, or realized dreams, and while his band (under the baton of the Black Crowes’ Marc Ford) gives fiery and impassioned performances to match the vocals, the lyrics don’t always make as strong an impression. The dues paying “Roadhouse Blues,” for example, includes images of wanderers, badlands, freight trains and long-haul trucks that aren’t quite convincing as vivid memories. The sound of Binham’s voice and the power of his band’s playing are enough to carry this release, but listeners may be left feeling he hasn’t fully connected with his own story. There’s a great deal of emotion in this work, but it’s in the tone rather than words. That will be enough for many listeners, and played live these tunes are sure to satisfy. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Hear “Dylan’s Hard Rain”
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The Belleville Outfit: Time to Stand

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belleville stand coverGypsy jazz, blue swing and country harmony

Though the Belleville Outfit makes their home in Austin, Texas, three of the members originally hail from South Carolina, and two more were drawn from school connections in New Orleans. Only violinist Phoebe Hunt is an Austin native (and a UT graduate to boot!), and the Southern roots help account for the original flavor in the band’s swing, particularly in Rob Teter’s pinched, Satchmo-style vocals. Along with the long-running Hot Club of Cowtown, this sextet has become one of Austin’s foremost proponents of gypsy jazz. The group hots things up with Reinhardt-influenced guitar runs and dramatic Grapelli-like violin flurries, but they also pick more ruminative mid-tempo blues, add keyboards (piano, B3 and Rhodes), vary their vocals from sly old-timey to fetching country harmonies, and make room for a few instrumental string jams.

As on last year’s debut, the group’s written most of the songs, adding covers of the Louis Prima/Keely Smith hit “Nothing’s Too Good for My Baby” and an up-tempo take on Walter Hyatt’s “Outside Looking Out.” The originals strike immediately with their melodic and instrumental complexity, but themes of falling, being in, running from, lamenting and losing love provide Teter and Hunt words over which to stretch their solo and harmony vocals. The jazzier tracks have a cool-cat hipness that’s balanced by earthier harmonies on the country tunes. The group’s hot-picking is impressive, but the mid-tempo twang of “Safe” and countrypolitan harmony of “Will This End in Tears” are equally fetching. The album closes with the uncharacteristically pop production of “Love Me Like I Love You,” suggesting the Belleville Outfit has a lot of musical range yet to explore. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Sunday Morning
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Various Artists: The Man of Somebody’s Dreams — A Tribute to the Songs of Chris Gaffney

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various_themanofsomebodysdreamsSoulful tribute to Southern California roots legend

Chris Gaffney, who passed away from liver cancer in 2008, was a consummate musical insider. Though he recorded six solo albums, and co-led the Hacienda Brothers with Dave Gonzalez, his reputation remained strongest with among his fellow musicians and songwriters. His contributions as a member of Dave Alvin’s Guilty Men were sufficiently important to lead Alvin to temporarily derail the latter’s performances upon the former’s passing. Gaffney’s synthesis of country, roots rock, Memphis soul and norteño powered not only his own work, but all those with whom he played or who played his songs. His songwriting, singing and accordion took on varying shades as he stood out front, shared the spotlight with Gonzalez, or provided support for Alvin, but he wasn’t a chameleon, he was a straw that stirred the drink.

When Alvin temporarily sidelined the Guilty Men, he spent some time producing this rich, eighteen track tribute to the songs and spirit of his compadre. Many of Gaffney’s Southern California cohorts are here, including Los Lobos, John Doe, Dave Gonzalez and Big Sandy. Also included are leading lights of Americana singer-songwriting, including Joe Ely, Peter Case, Jim Lauderdale, Tom Russell, James McMurtry and Robbie Fulks. More surprising are appearances by Boz Skaggs and a Freddy Fender track borrowed from the Texas Tornados’ 1996 release 4 Aces. Skaggs might seem like the odd man out in this company, but his smooth ’70s soul sound is an excellent match for Gaffney’s Stax-flavored “Midnight Dream.”

Everyone here fits their chosen (or given) song to a tee. Gaffney’s accordion is echoed in Flaco Jimenez’s playing on “The Gardens” and norteño horns are heard in Calexico’s cover of “Frank’s Tavern.” Los Lobos brings a sad romanticism to the album’s waltzing title track and Alejandro Escovedo brings sad memories to “1968.” Jim Lauderdale, Robbie Fulks and John Doe each pour out a glass full of country tears, and Peter Case gives “Six Nights a Week” a roadhouse run-through. Alvin and Gonzalez sing their tracks as if they’re love songs to their departed friend, neither seeming ready to let go, and Dan Penn sings as a proud father who’s outlived his musical progeny.

Gaffney’s musical influences form a collage that’s mirrored by the collection of friends and admirers who’ve gathered to celebrate his life. The number of A-list songwriters who stopped by to sing a favorite from Gaffney’s catalog is a mark of how deeply his songs touch those who understand the nuts and bolts of songwriting craft. That the songs are so perfectly interpretable by others shows that their adoration is well deserved. The album closes with a previously unreleased Gaffney performance of “Guitars of My Dead Friends.” Leave it to a master to write the perfect capstone to his own tribute. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | 1968 Alejandro Escovedo
Chris Gaffney Obituary

The Red Stick Ramblers: My Suitcase is Always Packed

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redstickramblers_mysuitcase-copyTasty southern mash of Cajun, country, jazz and swing

The Ramblers fifth album, their second for Sugar Hill, continues to masterfully mix fiddle-led country and blues, Hot Club-styled jazz and galloping western swing. As the band’s evolved from imitation to influence, so too have they moved from albums stocked with covers to nearly all original material. Aside from a pair of Cajun classics, the Touchet Family’s “Old Fashioned Two Step” and Eddie Shuler’s “La Valse De Meche,” the band members have written their own country weepers, bluesy jazz and all manner of dance tunes. Actually, the entire album, as with most of the group’s repertoire, is filled with dance tunes – slow, fast and in between, this is music meant to get listeners moving.

The group’s lead vocalist (and one of its two fiddlers) Linzay Young says cheekily, “Who knew all these years of poverty, heart break, substance abuse, self-exploration and transient life-style would result in something worth-while!” Of those experiences, heartache tops the list, bending an elbow in “Drinkin’ to You,” dampening eyes on the fiddle waltz “Bloodshot,” singing the lonesome blues “Doggone My Time,” and unconvincingly giving bad times a kiss-off with “Goodbye to the Blues.” But the romantic problems aren’t all past-due as the songs find happiness in a less-then-perfect relationship, beg for another chance, navigate parental interference, and in the sly “My Suitcase is Always Packed,” avoid entanglement with an ever-ready escape plan.

The album closes with an original call-and-response jump blues “The Barnyard Bachelor” that provides a microcosm of the band’s nostalgic influences, musical chops, sweet humor and undeniable danceability. This band gets better with each release, more confident in their writing, more thorough in the absorption of their influences, and both tighter and more relaxed in their vocal harmonies and instrumental interplay. With guest helpings of accordion, steel and piano the Ramblers match suit-and-tie style to sleeves-rolled-up workmanship. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Drinkin’ to You
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Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers: Songs in the Night

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samanthacrain_songsinthenightFirst full-length from riveting Oklahoma Americana folk singer

Samantha Crain is a Choctaw folk singer from rural Oklahoma whose vocal warble creates a sense of old-timey jazz. Her 2007 debut EP, The Confiscation, captured the feeling of an eerie walk along the canopied banks of a Southern Gothic river, and though this full-length isn’t as starkly foreboding, its imagery and lyrical meters remain striking and original. Crain’s gravitated from storytelling to poetic allusion, often leaving the tone and dynamics of her singing to communicate the pain, fear, confusion, despair and dislocation not transparently revealed in her words. The album is perhaps even more effective if you don’t resort to the lyric sheet. Crain continues to stretch her lyrics over the words’ rhythms, often repeating phrases in a trailing fog of lost thoughts or exclamation of suddenly realized memory. The Shivers’ Americana basics (guitar, bass, harmonica and drums) are augmented with touches of mandolin, trombone and mini-moog, remaining rustic and restrained; the slow-to-mid tempos are broken only once for the post-punk rockabilly shuffle and twang of “Bullfight (Change Your Mind).” Crain’s voice remains mystically compelling, and though her new songs haven’t the thick atmosphere of The Confiscation‘s, they’re still full of memorable images and riveting twists. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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Trainwreck Riders: The Perch

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trainwreckriders_theperchCowpunk revival: punk rock meets country waltz

This San Francisco trio travels the same circles as lo-fi minimalists Two Gallants, but the Riders country leanings take them closer to 1980s bands like Blood on the Saddle, Rank and File, the Meat Puppets, and Replacements. The album opens with thrashing rhythm guitar and drums, but by track two the throbbing bass is accompanied by melodically picked hooks. By track three the vocals take on a country twang, and on track four there’s lap steel. The band-written songs are filled with heartbreaks that won’t let go, frustrated misunderstandings, and late-night drunks, and the music is rendered as strung-out ballads, cowpunk waltzes and amped-up two-steps. Most of the songs stare into unfading memories of past emotional train wrecks, and even when there’s an inkling of change, such as the wished-for dissolution of “Livin’ Daylight,” it’s viewed with trepidation. The band retains their guitar, bass and drums punk-rock urgency even as guests add dobro, fiddle and accordion, and the high edginess of Pete Frauenfelder’s vocals makes the lamentation all the more powerful. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Safety of a Back
Trainwreck Riders’ MySpace Page

King Wilkie: King Wilkie Presents- The Wilkie Family Singers

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kingwilkie_singersAudacious pop concept by former bluegrass wunderkind

If you caught King Wilkie’s bluegrass debut Broke, and somehow managed to miss their break with orthodoxy on 2007’s Low Country Suite, you’re in for a really big surprise. With the original group disbanded, and founding member Reid Burgess relocated to New York City, the band’s name has been redeployed as the front for this stylistically zig-zagging concept album. The Wilkie Family Singers are an imagined co-habitating, musically-inclined family fathered by shipping magnate Jude Russell Wilkie, and filled out by a wife, six children, a cousin, two friends and two pets.

In reality the assembled group includes Burgess, longtime collaborator John McDonald, multi-instrumentalist Steve Lewis, and guest appearances by Peter Rowan, David Bromberg, John McEuen, Robyn Hitchcock, Abigail Washburn and Sam Parton. And rather than constructing a storyline or song-cycle, Burgess wrote songs that give expression to the family’s life and backstory. As he explains, “Jude Russell Wilkie, Sr. had success with a Great Lakes shipping business, and becomes the father to a great family, whose normal familial roles aren’t neatly defined as they grow older. Their insular lifestyle and wealth has them in a sort of time warp. They’re wedged in limbo between past and future. Too big to hold mom’s hand or ride on dad’s shoulders, but still somehow too small to leave their childhood house.”

Much as the Beatles used Sgt. Pepper as a backdrop to inform the mood of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Burgess works from his sketch to conjure a family photo album rather than a written history. There are snapshots of togetherness, isolation, and stolen moments of solitary time, there’s lovesick pining, unrequited longing for the larger world, lives stunted in adolescence, violent dreams and medicinal coping. The band ranges over an impressive variety of styles that include acoustic country, blues and folk, rustic Americana, Dixieland jazz, ’50s-tinged throwbacks and ’70s-styled production pop. There’s even some back-porch picking here, but this edition of King Wilkie has much grander ambitions than to embroider the bluegrass handed down by Bill Monroe. The festival circuit’s loss is pop music’s gain.

Burgess paints the family as lyrical motifs and musical colors rather than descriptive profiles. The latter might have been more immediately satisfying but would have quickly turned stagey. Instead, the family’s dynamic is spelled out in small pieces, fitting the broad range of musical styles to create an album that plays beautifully from beginning to end. The songs stand on their own, but the family’s presence is felt in the flow of the album’s tracks. Casa Nueva hits a homerun with their maiden release, and King Wilkie proves itself a daring band whose next step should be highly anticipated. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Hey Old Man
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Merle Haggard: Hag / Someday We’ll Look Back

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merlehaggard_hagStellar pair of 1971 albums continues Haggard’s incredible run

Merle Haggard proved himself a triple-threat country legend – a compelling live performer, a repeat hitmaker and one of the genre’s best album artists. When he started his run on Capitol with 1965’s Strangers and 1966’s Swinging Doors/TheBottle Let Me Down, he packed each with superb originals and beautifully interpreted covers. Even more impressive is that the quality never dipped as he released multiple albums per year throughout the 1960s and well into the 1970s. By the time he released this pair in 1971, Haggard was an international success (having been named the “Entertainer of the Year” in 1970 by both the ACM and CMA) and so deeply in the zone as to make these works seem completely effortless.

1971’s Hag followed tribute albums to Jimmie Rogers (Same Train, A Different Time) and Bob Wills (A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World), and found Haggard returning to songwriting. He sustains the melancholy broken hearts of earlier albums in troubled romances, teary goodbyes and even a happy-go-lucky capitulation to bad luck. Though Haggard’s politics had been misinterpreted with “Okie Muskogee,” the social tolerance of “The Farmer’s Daughter” is plainspoken, and his call to a higher authority, “Jesus, Take a Hold” is clear in its assessment of the world’s ills. He holds true to himself with “I Can’t Be Myself” and closes the album with an inventory of some unusual experiential riches.

The album’s covers include Redd Stewart and Ernest Tubb’s “Soldier’s Last Letter,” as sadly poignant in the Vietnam era as it had been during World War II. Dave Kirby’s down-and-out “Sidewalks of Chicago” mirrors Haggard’s own hard-luck songs, as does the cast off alcoholic of Dean Holloway’s “No Reason to Quit.” This CD reissue adds three bonus tracks: a superb version of Hank Cochran’s outlaw declaration “I’ll Be a Hero (When I Strike),” a relaxed jazz-tinged cover of the blues “Trouble in Mind,” and a previously unreleased cover of the tin pan alley standard “I Ain’t Got Nobody” whose lively yodel, fiddle and swing beat recall Haggard’s love of Bob Wills.

The year’s second album, Someday We’ll Look Back, is more subdued, with several ballads lined by strings and pedal steel. There’s infidelity, relationships teetering on the edge and a tearful memory of better days, but there are also moments of optimism as Haggard dreams of a brighter future and considers dipping his toe back into the mainstream. There’s also some twangy Bakersfield-styled guitar licks and songs of the California fields. Dottie West’s “One Row at a Time” follows a Georgian’s migration to the coast, Haggard’s classic “Tulare Dust” sings of the hard labor at journey’s end, and Dallas Frazier’s “California Cottonfields” surveys the Golden State’s broken promise.

The gulf between hippies and straights is bridged once again on “Big Time Annie’s Square,” and the hopeless dreams of a convicted man provide grist for “Huntsville.” The bonuses include a cover of Bob Wills’ fiddle tune, “Spanish Two Step,” and Haggard’s multi-symptom “Worried, Unhappy, Lonesome and Sorry.” Haggard’s first dozen albums are remarkable in their consistency, and though this pair, much like the last few, consolidates rather than pushes forward, they remain among the best in his catalog.

Capitol’s series of two-fers include both original album covers (one on each side of the booklet), color photo reproductions, and newly struck liner notes. Though Haggard fans are likely to have a lot of this material on previous single-CD reissues or box sets, the logical album pairings and remastered 24-bit sound make these sets especially attractive. The only real nits one could pick is the absence of session credits, master numbering and chart positioning, as well as a lack of detail on some of the bonus tracks. These are minor issues for such a stellar series of five-star reissues. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

David Serby: Honkytonk and Vine

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davidserby_honkytonkandvineTerrific throwback to mid-80s West Coast country

Though he grew up in Illinois with adoptive parents, Serby’s a bona fide throwback to the throwback sounds of mid-80s Los Angeles. Ironically, he was born in Los Angeles to a biological father, only recently discovered, who was also a country musician. Serby’s honky-tonk swells from the same roots as the Blasters, but with a deeper helping of the country twang and two-step rhythms Dwight Yoakam brought to the scene. Serby’s vocals favor a gentler version of the Blasters’ Phil Alvin, but he also dips into a croon, such as with the Tex-Mex “For Cryin’ Out Loud,” splitting the difference between Yoakam and Ricky Nelson. The influential echoes are a bit eerie, but the swinging and songwriting are the real deal.

The album opens with twangy electric guitar and hot fiddle licks on the car themed “Get it in Gear.” Serby chases the object of his affection with enough hot rod allusions to make Brian Wilson and Roger Christian smile. He rains tears into his beer, despairs of cheating, and chases the tail-ends of revolving relationships to emerge with a sense of redemption when the dumper finds herself the dumpee. He writes sad songs, but doesn’t sing them sad as the band mostly sticks to jaunty mid-tempos. The down-tempo numbers, including the empathic ballad “Tumble Down,” and country soul “Honky Tonk Affair” are terrific, making you wish Serby would slow down a bit more often.

Serby’s a superb craftsman, expanding clever song titles into lyrics whose rhymes flow as smoothly as conversation. He’s just as clever with his music, mixing up straight two-steps, accordion lined Tex-Mex, Bakersfield sting, and Blasters-styled blue roots-rock. His band is terrific (the rhythm section of bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Gary Ferguson is truly propulsive), as is guest steel from Rick Shea and the legendary Jay Dee Maness and fiddle from Gabe Witcher. Adding to the historic coincidence, Maness played with Serby’s birth father in decade’s past. Shaking off a career in insurance, Serby indulged unknown musical genes and crafted a career filled with the joy of making music. That joy is in every country root he intertwines here. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | I Only Smoke When I’m Drinkin’
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