Album Review: Collin Raye – ‘All I Can Be’

Collin Raye made his solo debut in 1991 on Epic Records. His first album for the label was produced by Jerry Fuller and John Hobbs, and their sympathetic work grounded Collin’s silvery tenor in neotraditional country backings slathered in fiddle as sweet as his voice. Collin keeps the vocals understated and subtle. The team also found some excellent songs well suited to Collin’s voice, and the result was delightful.

The enchanting title track, ‘All I Can Be (Is A Sweet Memory)’ is a sweetly sung older Harlan Howard tune (once recorded by Conway Twitty) whose married protagonist parts from his younger lover for her own good. As Colin’s debut single, it was a modest start for him, just creeping into the top 30, but it is an extremely good song, with Vince Gill providing a close harmony vocal.

However, the followup ‘Love, Me’ was a career song for the newcomer, rocketing to the top of the charts and helping the album to platinum status. It is still probably Collin’s best remembered song. Written by Skip Ewing and Max T Barnes, it is a sweet story of the lifelong (and beyond) love of the protagonist’s grandparents. It escapes schmaltz thanks to Collin’s beautiful and palpably sincere vocal and the tastefully understated arrangement.

The third and last single, Every Second’ is a sunny mid-tempo love song with a traditional feel, and peaked at #2.

My personal favorite track is the plaintive lost-love ballad ‘It Could’ve Been So Good’, which Chris Waters wrote with Lonnie Wilson. Collin reflects on the opportunity he and his ex lost of potential lifelong happiness.

Almost as good, the wistful ballad ‘Faithful Old Flame’, penned by Lonnie Wilson and Brent Mason, has a lovely melody and allows Raye’s voice to soar as he dwells on an old love whose memory can’t be shaken off.

The charming ‘Scuse Moi My Heart’ scatters in some random French phrases as country boy Collin tries to woo a sophisticated country club lady in New Orleans. It’s one of the most engaging songs of its kind.

‘Sadly Ever After’ written by Mark Collie and Bruce Burch, uses the fairy tale metaphor for a failed relationship; there is a surprisingly upbeat feel thanks to the pacy tempo and full-blooded vocal. There is a rare co-writing credit for Collin with ‘Blue Magic’, written with his producers. This is an attractive if unexceptional mid-tempo love song with some lovely Rob Hajacos fiddle.

Collin’s strength is as a balad singer, but he takes it uptempo with ‘Any Old Stretch Of Blacktop’, expressing the joy of coming home to a loved one. The album also closes with the bright up-tempo warning to a neglectful husband, ‘If I Were You (And She Was Mine)’.

Everything about this album is a delight. Copies can be found cheaply, and this is an essential purchase for fans of 90s country.

Grade: A

Album Review: Joe Diffie – ‘Tougher Than Nails’

After the loss of his Monument deal, Joe signed to the indie label Broken Bow, for whom he released one album in 2004. He shared production duties with Lonnie Wilson and Buddy Cannon.

He was still a viable hit maker on country radio, even on a minor label, and the title track (a religious song) reached the top 20. Written by Phil O’Donnell, Max T Barnes and Kendell Marvel, it links a modern story (a little boy beaten up by bullies) to the example of Jesus. Perhaps not the most innovative of lyrics, but it is well done, as the father advises his boy against revenge:

Let me tell you a little story about the toughest man I know
Hit him and he just turned the other cheek
But don’t think for a minute he was weak
Cause in the end he showed them he was anything but frail
They hammered him to a cross
But He was tougher than nails

Later on the album, Joe takes the opposite message from a rather different role model in the tongue-in-cheek ‘What Would Waylon Do’, featuring a guest vocal from George Jones (doing his best Waylon impersonation). It was written by Leslie Satcher and Wynn Varble about the tribulations of being a touring musician, and was apparently initially inspired by an incident at a real Waylon Jennings concert when the promoter declined to pay him:

There’s blue cheese in the greenroom
What are we supposed to eat?
And the opening act’s a polka band
And they can’t keep a beat
…
Now the sheriff’s got the drug dogs
Tearing up our bus
We’re just hillbilly singers
I think he’s profiling us
And now he wants an autograph
And a free t-shirt or two
Well, what would Waylon do?

The second single, ‘If I Could Only Bring You Back’ (selected by the label owner and written by Frank Myers and Chip Davis) failed to make much of an impact. That was radio’s loss, as it was a beautifully interpreted, if rather sad and downbeat tale of bereavement, with understated string section. The protagonist declares he would be willing to give up all his worldly goods, if only the impossible could happen, but:

There’s no words I can say
Not a prayer I can pray
No road that you can take
Back to my arms
…

I would even take your place
If I could only bring you back

The December-set ‘This Time Last Year’, written by Giles Godard, Bobby Tomberlin and Robbie Wittkowski, has a similar feeling of loss. ‘Good News, Bad News’, written by Danny Wells and Chris Wallin, is even better, a sensitively delivered ballad about struggling with getting over lost love with nothing to look forward to but more of the same:

I’d unfeel the way I feel
If it would make you ungone
Gotta stop livin’ in the past
Look forward and not back
This getting used to go goin’ on without you
Is gonna take some time
The good news is tomorrow’s another day
But the bad news is tomorrow’s another day

Joe wrote five of the twelve tracks, including a rare solo composition, ‘Movin’ Train’, a song about an unsettling relationship which I can imagine bluegrass-style.

Album Review: Joe Diffie – ‘In Another World’

In Another World would be the final album Joe Diffie recorded for Epic, his label home all through his heady hit-making days of the 1990s.   It was again produced by Music Row veteran Don Cook and Lonnie Wilson.  The pair take a mostly neo-traditional approach to the music, and allow the lyrics and Joe’s vocal performances to shine through and be the central instrument on the album.  As a whole, this is one of Joe’s most solid efforts – almost all of these songs are good ones – but it does lack any real knockout moments.  In Another World didn’t restore Joe Diffie to a gold-selling record maker, though the title track did find a lot of favor with country radio.

‘In Another World’, the very pop-leaning title track, revisits a similar theme from Joe’s own ‘A Night To Remember’ with a man visualizing a love gone by.  The chorus sweeps you away, but the overall wall of production, and the use of echo and autotune make the song itself sound more than a bit out of place among the rest of Joe’s hits.

Jo Dee Messina took ‘My Give A Damn’s Busted’ to the top of the charts in 2005, but the Tony Martin, Tom Shapiro, and Joe Diffie co-write makes its first appearance to the country audience here.  It’s no surprise not many remembered it – considering it’s status as an album cut on an obscure Joe Diffie album – and given that this version just sounds so tame, and dare I say, phoned in, while memories of Messina’s punchy performance are still fresh in my ears.  Where Messina giggles and sashays her way through the lyric, Diffie appears to be aiming for a more deadpan approach – one that doesn’t serve the song well.

‘If I Lost Her’ finds a man in a bar after a fight with his wife, and tells of the advances of another, albeit adequate, woman on the make.  The attention from this new lady only sends his mind to the one at home, and rekindles the fire between them.  It takes a somewhat plodding pace, but is a good song, if not a recurrent favorite.

From the minds of John Scott Sherrill and Shawn Camp is ‘Hollow Deep As Mine’, a modern-day country/blues hybrid story of a Kentucky man, bemoaning the cold and isolated mountain backroads he calls home.  ’Hollow’ also features the production style, and mid-tempo pace, that I’ve always preferred in Joe Diffie’s music, with plenty of steel and fiddle set to a driving melody.  An added bonus this time are that the lyrics are smart, vivid, and to the point.

Following the mid-tempo neo-traditional sound is the album’s second single, ‘This Pretender’.  The oft-told tale of someone wearing a smile to mask their heartache and the half a dozen cliché’ images and emotions in lines like ‘Got a smile painted on my face, got my heartache locked away prayin’ you won’t see’ helped it to stall at #49 on the country singles chart.

A couple of novelty songs pop up this time out, though both are clever and without an overabundance they begin to actually sound novel again.  The aforementioned ‘My Give A Damn’s Busted’ precedes ’Stoned On Her Love’ as the only up-tempo ditties.  ’Stoned’ features Sawyer Brown-style harmonies and similar guitar work that would get Mark Miller popping and bouncing.  ’Live To Love Another Day’ falls close to the novelty song category, but a determined vocal from Joe on this Brooks & Dunn-inspired country rocker, with the guitars cranked up high in the mix, keep it serious enough.  Likewise, ‘What A Way To Go’ wryly tells of a man giving in to a woman he knows will break his heart, maybe even kill him, but dying in her arms, hey, ‘what a way to go’.

‘The Grandpa That I Know’ was written by Tim Mensy and Shawn Camp and was first recorded by Mensy for his own Giant Records release, and later by Patty Loveless on her sublime On Your Way Home album.  Diffie’s abilities as an interpreter of a sentimental country lyric are at their apex here, accompanied by a simple arrangement that’s perfectly suited for his memories of the earthy farmer in overalls that he calls Grandpa, while he tries not to commit to memory the image of him in a striped suit, going to meet his maker.  The mournful fiddle solo at the end is a fitting touch, and closes an overall solid collection of country music.

Grade: B

In Another World is still widely available, at amazon and everywhere else.

Album Review: Joe Diffie – ‘A Night To Remember’

Joe had followed up the disappointing sales of Twice Upon A Time with a Greatest Hits set, and in 1999 released what was to be his final effort for Epic. Produced by Don Cook with Joe’s old friend and collaborator Lonnie Wilson, it was a real return to form artistically, with not a novelty song in sight, and although it did not do as well commercially as it deserved to, he sustained his profile on radio.

The title track, written by Max D. Barnes and T. W. Hale, is a tenderly sung ballad focussing on a protagonist surrounding wallowing in tangible memories of a past relationship. It is a really good song, and was deservedly a sizeable hit, peaking at #6 on the country chart and even getting some crossover radio play. ‘The Quittin’ Kind’ is a solid enough mid-tempo love song with a slightly cluttered production. It was a poor choice as the follow-up single as it is perhaps the least interesting song here, and understandably it failed to crack the top 20. The efficiently poppy mid-tempo ‘It’s Always Somethin’’ (written by Aimee Mayo and Marv Green) isn’t much to my taste, but it appealed to country radio and gave Joe another top 5 hit.

Four of Joe’s own songs are included, three of them co-writes with Lonnie, including a couple of the highlights. One of these is ‘I’m The Only Thing I’ll Hold Against You’, written some years earlier by the pair with Kim Williams. It was originally recorded by Conway Twitty on his final album in 1993, but Joe’s version is even better. His voice really soars in the chorus as he swears unconditional love and forgiveness as he reconciles with his wife:

Sometimes things go wrong between a woman and a man
I know we’ll make it work
All we need’s a second chance
I’m the only thing I’ll hold against you

Let my lovin’ arms show you the truth
There’ll be no “I told you so”s
No matter how much heartache we go through
I love you (I’ll always love you)
I’m the only thing I’ll hold against you

Joe and Lonnie were joined by Zack Turner to express the opposing point of view in the anguished ‘Are We Even Yet’, another dramatic and beautifully sung ballad. This bitter-tinged look at a couple destroying themselves by keeping score of hurt is my overall favorite track:

My words hurt and cause you pain
Teardrops fall like pouring rain
You cry and cry
Love dies and dies some more
Revenge is sweet when you don’t talk
I’m afraid you’re gonna walk
What will it take to take back the things we’ve said?
Are we even yet?

Are we even yet?
Do we even know
If we’re holdin’ on or lettin’ go?
Nobody wins when we can’t forgive and forget
Are we even yet?

It is a shame this remained buried as an album track on one of Joe’s lower selling albums.

This trio also wrote the bittersweet midtempo ‘You Can’t Go Home’ as Joe returns to a former old marital home:

I came looking for a feeling but the feeling’s gone
You can go back but you can’t go home

Zack and Lonnie wrote the downbeat ‘Better Off Gone’ together, about a man struggling to come to terms with his decision to leave; it’s another fine song with an impassioned vocal as Joe admits he isn’t really happier sitting alone in the dark.

Album Review: Joe Diffie – ‘Twice Upon A Time’

Though he did release a handful of great ballads to country radio, some of which became bonafide hits, Joe Diffie was always more successful with fun, up-tempo numbers.  By the latter half of the 90s – nearly a decade into his hit-making career – country radio had begun to cool toward even Joe’s brand of humor meets neotraditional sound.  Like the last 2 singles from Life’s So Funny, the single releases from Twice Upon A Time continued Joe’s downward spiral from the limelight at country radio. There are no top-ten hits here, and the highest showing comes from the insidious ‘This Is Your Brain’s #25 peak.  Without much support from radio, it was also Joe Diffie’s first album since his debut not to be certified by the RIAA.  Its lack of radio and retail success notwithstanding, Twice Upon A Time doesn’t deserve its status as the end-note for Joe’s short-lived glory days, and is a step above some of his other, more commercially successful albums.

‘This Is Your Brain’ is a fast-paced, partly spoken, mostly amped up romp narrated by, you guessed it, your brain. Taking the hook from the pop-culture favorite drug resistance ads ‘this is your brain on drugs’ that featured an egg sizzling in a frying pan, among other scenarios, the brain is cautioning this guy about his lack of resistance for the opposite sex. Even with repeated warnings from the body’s control center, he still falls in love and loses more than a few I.Q. points every time. The Kelly Garrett and Craig Wiseman-penned tune has its clever moments, but it’s earworm melody will cool you on those before long.

My favorite on the album, and another missed single opportunity for Joe, was the album’s superb title track. Songwriters Skip Ewing and Kim Williams paint a picture of a couple at a crossroads. Tough times have clouded both their minds with doubt, and the idea of leaving has occurred to both of them, ‘The choice is ours, the pen’s still in our hands/We can right the wrong, or we can write the end‘, Joe sings with heartbroken conviction.

‘The Promised Land’ finds a man nostalgic for the place where his roots began. The strong religious undertones between the real-life memories should have played nicely on late 90s country radio (think: ‘Holes In The Floor of Heaven’), but as the final single it barely registered at #61 on the charts.

‘Show Me A Woman’ chugs along at breakneck speed, but doesn’t offer much more than the opportunity to jam with the band. Likewise, ‘Houston, We Have a Problem’ features guitar solos that would make Brad Paisley envious, but is basically the product of a buzz-word mentality, taking the catch-phrase from the Apollo movies and attempting to build a song around it.

Joe contributed only one of his own songs this time out – a co-write with frequent collaborator Lonnie Wilson, ‘I Got A Feelin’, which was was first recorded by Tracy Lawrence  - though he did draw from the usual suspects found on his previous albums.  In addition to the title track, Craig Wiseman contributes the Bob DiPiero collaboration ‘Zero’, a much better song in the novelty format, wherein a man is counting down reasons, rights, and wrongs that lead to him being single, all to an infectious melody.  Dennis Linde’s ‘Call Me John Doe’ is a honky-tonking tale of a man who did his woman wrong one too many times.  Now he’s shivering in her freezer. Better than just album filler, any of these would were worth sending out to radio, some more than what was shipped to radio.

‘One More Breath’, written by Leslie Satcher, closes the set on a high note.  The mostly-piano lead ballad is a tender expression of gratitude coupled with a promise of never-ending devotion.  Perhaps a bit saccharine at times, it’s a well-written song that Joe delivers beautifully.  Though Joe continued to fill his albums with more schtick than substantial songs, Twice Upon A Time is an album that is more balanced between the two sides of Joe Diffie – the balladeer and the novelty-song singer – but it also offers other glimpses to a more contemporary artist with tracks like ‘Zero’ and the album closer.

Grade: B-

Twice Upon A Time is still widely available, on CD and digitally from amazon.

Album Review: Joe Diffie – ‘Honky Tonk Attitude’

April 1993 saw the release of Joe Diffie’s third studio album on the Epic label. Honky Tonk Attitude would continue Joe’s ascent to country stardom as it produced 4 hit singles, the first 3 of them hitting the top 5.  Likewise, the album itself was Joe’s first to place inside the top 10 on the country albums chart, and would also be his first to earn platinum certification.  As Honky Tonk Attitude continued the success Diffie had earned with his prior albums, it found the singer shifting gears a bit, away from the ballad-heavy albums that came before it. Still, Joe ably wraps his warm and flexible baritone around a couple of decidedly traditional country numbers and a handful of up-tempo ditties ranging from clever to silly.

The lead single and title track to the album is one of several Joe Diffie singles that sort of gel together into one giant ball of loud in my head.  Other artists are guilty of this sort of overindulgence into up-tempo with wailing guitars and tongue-between-teeth lyrics.  Brooks & Dunn’s massive success with ‘Boot Scootin’ Boogie’ certainly helped fuel this wildfire of line dance-inspired country hits.  This tune about getting on your ‘Friday night, get right honky tonk attitude‘ peaked at #5 just about the time of the album’s release.

Proving that when given a better lyric, he could inject just the right amount of humor when the song calls for it, Joe’s performance on the clever ‘Prop Me Up Beside The Jukebox (If I Die)’ finds the singer showing maybe why he recorded so many songs of this nature: he’s actually really good at them. This time he fared just a bit better with country radio, and rose to #3 with this single.  Still not breaking out of the novelty mode already set by this album, the next single tells the story of Billy Bob (repeatedly) painting his and Charlene’s name on the water tower to profess his love.  And to prove his devotion – and also make sure everybody could see it – he uses the bright green color of John Deere tractors.  It’s a rather endearing story song, and writer Dennis Linde draws on very specific images to give a very clear picture in your head as the song plays.  ’John Deere Green’ would be the third top 5 single from Honky Tonk Attitude.

Album Review: Joe Diffie – ‘Regular Joe’

Joe Diffie’s sophomore release continued to build upon the winning formula of 1990′s A Thousand Winding Roads and went on to become his first gold album in 1992. While listening to it for the first time in quite a while, caused me to experience a severe case of 90s nostalgia. The first notes of the opening track, “Startin’ Over Blues”, a single that peaked just outside the Top 40 caused me to stop what I was doing and listen in amazement at the excellent and non-pretentious picking and singing, something that I routinely took for granted in the 90s but sorely miss from most contemporary releases. Like its predecessor, Regular Joe was produced by Bob Montgomery and Johnny Slate. Diffie had a hand in writing four of the album’s ten songs.

In addition to the aforementioned “Startin’ Over Blues”, Regular Joe spawned three other singles, including two top five hits — “Is It Cold In Here” and “Ships That Don’t Come In” — which I consider to be the two finest performances of Diffie’s career. The former examines a dying relationship, while the latter is a conversation between two men in a bar — a younger one who is discontented with his life, and an older, wiser one who points out that there are plenty of others who are far worse off. It’s not exactly the type of song that would find a home on country radio today, but it’s the kind that the format so desperately needs. It’s difficult to decide which song I like better, though if forced to choose, I’d give a slight edge to “Is It Cold In Here”. Diffie shares songwriting credits on both of these masterpieces. Either one could have and should have been considered his career record; it’s a shame that he is better remembered today for his uptempo semi-novelty tunes. Following these two consecutive top five successes, Joe faltered a bit on his next single, the upbeat “Next Thing Smokin’” — another of his co-writes, which only made it to #16 on the charts. “Startin’ Over Blues” fared even worse, stalling at #41, despite being one of the more radio-friendly tracks on the album. Possibly it didn’t receive enough promotional support from the label. In the early 90s, artists tended to release albums more frequently than they do today. The lead single from Diffie’s next project was released slightly more than a year after Regular Joe, which may have been to the detriment of “Startin’ Over Blues”, his worst performance on the singles charts up to that time.

In addition the album contains several solid tracks that were not chosen for single release. Diffie turns in a fine vocal performance, reminiscent of George Jones on “Ain’t That Bad Enough”, which he wrote with Ron Moore and longtime collaborator Lonnie Wilson. The closing track “Goodnight Sweetheart” could have been subtitled “The One That Got Away”; it went on to become a Top 10 hit for the now-forgotten David Kersh in 1996. It’s surprising that Epic didn’t send this one to radio, particularly in light of the chart success of the album’s other ballads.

Despite all of these fine performances, Regular Joe is not without its flaws. It is marred by two tracks in particular — “Just A Regular Joe” and “Back To Back Heartaches” which both suffer from a now dated-sounding line-dance style beat and production which make them sound out-of-place with the rest of the album. However, both of these missteps are forgivable, detracting only slightly from the enjoyment experienced from listening to this fine album.

Grade: A-

Regular Joe is still in print and available from vendors such as Amazon and iTunes.

Album Review: Joe Diffie – ‘A Thousand Winding Roads’

Joe’s debut solo album was released on Epic in 1990, and immediately propelled him to stardom; overnight success (at the age of 32) which was thoroughly deserved, because this is an excellent album, and a fine exemplar of the neotraditional movement which all too briefly dominated the genre. It was produced by Bob Montgomery (then also working with Vern Gosdin) and Johnny Slate. They provided a sympathetic backing which showcased Joe’s vocal prowess.

The lead single ‘Home’ (written by Andy Spooner and Fred Lehner), which has the disillusioned protagonist looking wistfully back to his childhood, took Joe right to the top of the charts. It set records as the first ever debut single to hit #1 on all three of the major charts then in existence (Billboard, Radio & Records, and Gavin). The nostalgia feeds on the protagonist’s disillusionment about the dreams he has been pursuing:

The rainbows I’ve been chasing keep on fading before I find my pot of gold…

Now the miles I put behind me ain’t as hard as the miles that lay ahead
And it’s way too late to listen to the words of wisdom that my daddy said
The straight and narrow path he showed me turned into a thousand winding roads
My footsteps carry me away, but in my mind I’m always going home

The pained ballad ‘If You Want Me To’ was almost as successful, reaching #2 in 1991, and is my personal favorite of the four singles from this project. One of Joe’s own songs (written with Larry Williams), it was the first showcase of the apparently effortless slide between registers which is Joe’s most remarkable gift as a vocalist, as the narrator gently tells his beloved he is prepared to do whatever she wants from him, even if:

If it takes good-bye to make you happy
Then I’ll just walk away if you want me to

‘If The Devil Danced (In Empty Pockets)’, written by Kim Williams (Larry’s brother) and Ken Spooner, took Joe back to #1, with its witty western swing twist on being broke and too easily swayed by a persuasive car salesman. The optimistic final single was written by Joe with his friend and regular co-writer Lonnie Wilson (who also plays drums and sings backing vocals on the album), about finding a ‘New Way (To Light Up An Old Flame)’. The only really happy song on the album, it was another #2 Billboard hit, and cemented Joe’s status as one of the brightest new stars of the early 90s.

Heartbreak also comes uptempo with the drinking-to-forget-the-heartbreak song ‘I Ain’t Leavin’ Til She’s Gone’ (written by Joe with Wayne Perry and Lonnie Wilson). Joe wails,

One drink’s too many
Ten ain’t enough
Lord, but she’s still here
So I’ll have one more

More western swing is on offer with the similarly themed ‘Liquid Heartache’, another of Joe’s songs, this one written with the veteran Red Lane, with a great groove which really lets the musicians stretch out.

Spotlight Artist: Joe Diffie

Joe Diffie hit the country music scene just months after the fabled Class of ’89, and like several of the 1989 alumni, Joe’s first releases to country radio shot right up the charts, and he was on his way to a decade-long run of success that includes 16 top 10 hits, five of which went to #1. In the meantime, Joe Diffie racked up 4 consecutive gold-selling albums, with two of these going all the way to platinum for shipments of over 1,000,000 copies. Best known today for his sometimes clever, always fun, novelty songs, mostly about the joys and simplicity of rural life, Diffie was also an able balladeer, and his best performances come from not the lightweight charm of songs like ‘Bigger Than The Beatles’ or ‘Prop Me Up Beside The Jukebox’, but from his neo-traditional offerings like ‘Home’ and ‘A Night To Remember’.

Joseph Logan Diffie was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on December 28, 1958, but his family would make several moves across country before settling back in Oklahoma for Joe’s high school years. His father was a guitar and banjo player and his mother a singer. The family also performed together regularly, and as part of Joe’s aunt’s country band. It was in this band that Joe made his first public performance, at age 4. Joe would go on to college to pursue a degree in medicine, but dropped out after marrying for the first of three times in 1977. While working several blue-collar jobs on the side, Joe continued to pursue his music career, performing in the gospel group, Higher Purpose. Later, he would front a bluegrass band billed as Special Edition.

In 1986, following a divorce from his first wife, and and after some initial songwriting success, Joe made the move to Nashville to follow his musical ambitions full-time. The legendary Hank Thompson had recorded Joe’s ‘Love On The Rocks’. In Music City, he found work as an in-demand demo singer and continued to hone his songwriting skills. In 1989, Holly Dunn had a top 5 hit with ‘There Goes My Heart Again’, a song Joe had co-written with Lonnie Wilson and Wayne Perry. A recording contract with Epic soon followed, and Joe issued his debut for the label in September of 1990. The album’s first single, the unforgettable ‘Home’, quickly shot to the top of the country singles chart, and the album produced another chart-topper and 2 #2 hits as well.

Following the success of his debut album, Joe went on to release a string of highly successful albums for the Epic label between 1990 -99. His years at Epic would ultimately prove to be his most commercially successful. Shortly after his exit from Epic, Joe moved over to Monument Records and his only album for the label, In Another World, earned him another top 10 hit in the title track. Subsequently, another label change to the independent Broken Bow netted him another top 20 hit in 2004.

Recently, Joe has signed to Rounder Records, and the label first issued a live album, recorded at the famous Billy Bob’s in Fort Wort, Texas, on the singer in 2008. Last year saw The Ultimate Collection, which consists of re-recordings of his Epic hits for the Rounder imprint.  Joe now plans to release his first new music in 6 years.  Also from Rounder, Homecoming: A Bluegrass Collection arrives August 24.

Joe Diffie, to me, was always a bit of a double-personality artist. There was the goofy, fun-loving moustached and mulleted singer of up-tempo ditties. And then, even with the same look, Joe could be just as convincing while nailing you to the wall with a great country lyric, as he does with ‘Is It Cold In Here’. But the interesting aspect about Joe was that he seemed to have a firm grasp on both personas and maneuvered them both very well. This month, we’ll be taking a look back through the catalog of Joe Diffie, and offering our own take on both sides of Joe Diffie’s musical personality.  We hope you enjoy reading our thoughts, and that we re-discover some of our old favorites, and maybe introduce some of you to some great music along the way.