Album Review: George Strait – ‘Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind’

George Strait’s fourth album, released in 1984, marked yet another advance in his career. He started working with a new producer (his third), label head Jimmy Bowen, but for the first time George himself received a co-production credit, something he has done ever since. There was no obvious change in musical direction, as [...]

Super Summer Giveaway

Update: We hope everybody enjoyed our John Anderson coverage for July and hope you’ll be sticking around as we sort through Reba’s catalog this month.  And thanks to everybody who entered our giveaway.  A chance to win Reba’s new album is just around the corner.  The winners names are next to the album you won [...]

Album Review: John Anderson – ‘Bigger Hands’

After an unsuccessful attempt at another comeback in 2007 with the John Rich-produced Easy Money, John Anderson’s latest album Bigger Hands was released last month on the small label Country Crossing. It reunites him with co-producer James Stroud, who produced his early 90s records, and the result is mostly fairly understated, and is generally [...]

Album Review: John Anderson – ‘Nobody’s Got It All’

After the brief resurrection of John Anderson’s career in the early 90s, it died down again in the later part of that decade, although he has continued to release some excellent music on a series of major labels. One of my favorites is this release from 2001, on Columbia. It was produced by [...]

Album Review: John Anderson – ‘Seminole Wind’

After a couple faltered albums on the Warner Brothers label, where John Anderson scored his biggest successes in the 1980s with hits like ‘Swingin’ and ‘Black Sheep’, the singer moved to MCA.  He recorded two albums under the guise of label-head Jimmy Bowen. (Read Occasional Hope’s review of his first MCA release here.)  In 1991, [...]

Album Review: Darryl Worley – ‘Sounds Like Life’

After almost ten years of varying degrees of success, Darryl Worley’s latest album came out recently on Stroudavarious Records. It is produced by Jim ‘Moose’ Brown and Kevin ‘Swine’ Grantt, and Darryl himself wrote or co-wrote almost all the material. One of the few exceptions, ‘Tequila On Ice’, written by Rivers Rutherford and [...]

Album Review: John Anderson – ‘Blue Skies Again’

After the monster hit that was ‘Swinging’ the only way was down for John Anderson. He continued to incorporate pop and rock influences in his music for few years after All The People Are Talking, with diminishing returns both commercially and artistically. He was still hitting the top 10 sporadically, but in 1987 [...]

Album Review: John Anderson – ‘All The People Are Talkin’

After his wildly successful Wild and Blue album, propelled by the smash crossover hit, ‘Swingin’, John Anderson’s next album featured much of the same formula as the previous release.  So while there are still plenty of stone-country moments here, we also find John branching out into the rock and roll sound that he embraced for the [...]

Album Review – John Anderson – ‘Wild And Blue’

Wild And Blue was John Anderson’s fourth album, released in 1982, and it provided the springboard for a major change in his career.
It was produced, like I Just Came Home To Count The Memories, by John with the Canadian Frank Jones who had worked with some of the all-time greats, including, at various times, Lefty [...]

Classic Rewind: John Anderson – ‘Wild and Blue’

Album Review: John Anderson – ‘I Just Came Home To Count The Memories’

John Anderson’s third outing for Warner Brothers found him sharing production duties with a new co-producer, Frank Jones, and showcasing a slightly more polished sound. This is most apparent on songs such as the title track and “When Lady Is Cloudin’ Your Vision”, which feature a string section, something that hadn’t been typical of [...]

Classic Rewind: John Anderson with Merle Haggard & The Strangers – ‘Swinging Doors’

Featuring the late Bonnie Owens singing harmony:

Album Review: John Anderson – ‘John Anderson 2′

As the title suggests, John Anderson 2, was the singer’s second studio album for Warner Brothers, released in 1981. Produced by Norro Wilson, it picked up where the previous year’s debut album left off, calling on some of Nashville’s premier songwriters and musicians, and stood in stark contrast to the typical Urban Cowboy fare of [...]

Classic Rewind: John Anderson – ‘Would You Catch A Falling Star’

Album Review: John Anderson – ‘John Anderson’

After signing him in 1977, Warner Brothers took their time developing John Anderson, testing the waters with a series of singles at country radio, most of which failed to chart. Finally, in 1980 they took the plunge, and released his self-titled debut album, produced by Norro Wilson. It did not sell particularly well, [...]

Spotlight Artist: John Anderson

John Anderson has been one of the most distinctive voices in country music for nearly 30 years, and although his career has seen more ups and downs than some of his contemporaries, it has endured and his latest album, Bigger Hands was released last month. He is one of my personal favorites, and I [...]

Album Review: Daryle Singletary – ‘Rockin’ In The Country’

Daryle Singletary is a man with a genuinely great voice, who might have been one of the best of the neotraditional country singers of the 1990s in terms of sheer vocal ability. Sadly, his chart career was based on fairly mediocre material, and he only had three top 5 hits. I only really [...]

Album Review: Keith Whitley – ‘Wherever You Are Tonight’

In 1995 BNA (successor to RCA) released one more album of Keith Whitley’s previously unreleased material, this time solely drawn from his songwriter demos for Tree. This album really showcases Keith the singer-songwriter, something he never had the chance to show during his lifetime, as he wrote or co-wrote every track. The songs [...]

Album Review – Keith Whitley: A Tribute Album

One of the problems with making a tribute album is how far the participants are prepared to bring something of themselves to the interpretation, and how far they are so concerned to pay their respects the artist being honored, that the end result is little more than very tasteful, high-class karaoke.
The tribute album produced by [...]