Country music from a fan's point of view since 2008
The promotional cycle for John Michael Montgomery’s Brand New Me had come to an end when Atlantic Records closed their Nashville division in 2001. They weren’t ready to give up on him just yet, so Montgomery moved to their parent label Warner Bros. Nashville, where he reunited with Scott Hendricks for 2002’s Pictures.
The album charted three singles. “‘Till Nothin’ Comes Between Us” is a slick mid-tempo pop ballad, which features a smoothed over vocal from Montgomery. “Country Thang” is typical country-rock, beaming with southern pride. “Four-Wheel Drive” is the best of the bunch, with a nice steel and fiddle based melody, reminiscent of Brad Paisley’s work from the time period. The tracks peaked at #19, #45, and #52, respectively.
Harley Allen, who revived Montgomery’s career with “The Little Girl” appears here, as co-writer, along with Paul Overstreet, of “I Wanna Be There,” a contemporary ballad about a father’s prayer for his child as he or she goes through the phases of life — first words, first date, first heartbreak, etc. John Rich co-wrote “Believe In Me,” a mid-tempo promise of loyalty from a man to his woman.
Rivers Rutherford, a prominent songwriter during this era, was a co-writer of “Love and Alcohol,” an uptempo cautionary tale where a man is warning a woman he’s been drinking so he’s not quite himself. “Love Changes Everything” is a charming but clichéd story of young love during the summer months on a farm. Montgomery is in a grateful mood on the upbeat “Got You To Thank For That,” which has a nice energy.
There’s nothing particularly interesting about the title track, which traces the love story of a couple through photographs and the memories they conjure up, all the while looking ahead to the memories yet to be made. “It Goes Like This,” which features Sixwire, a group that at the time had released their debut album, is an early sign of bro-country with the way it objectives the woman as nothing more than an object of desire.
I wouldn’t characterize Pictures as a bad album, but it is very generic and lacks even one song I could pull out as essential listening. It’s very typical of early-21st century commercial country music and I could hear shades of what Lonestar was cooking up during this time period. Pictures came on the back end of Montgomery’s career, where he was fighting to remain relevant ten years out from Life’s A Dance.
Radio had mostly moved on, actually to his brother and Troy Gentry, who were hitting their stride with “My Town” and “Hell Yeah.” No one was missing anything with Pictures, so this album’s lack of success was only a loss to his record label.
Grade: C
1957 (Sales): Bye Bye Love — The Everly Brothers (Cadence)
1957 (Disc Jockeys): Bye Bye Love — The Everly Brothers (Cadence)
1967: I’ll Never Find Another You — Sonny James (Capitol)
1977: Way Down — Elvis Presley (RCA)
1987: Why Does It Have to Be (Wrong or Right) — Restless Heart (RCA)
1997: Come Cryin’ to Me — Lonestar (BNA)
2007: Never Wanted Nothing More — Kenny Chesney (BNA)
2017: Body Like a Back Road — Sam Hunt (MCA)
2017 (Airplay): Do I Make You Wanna — Billy Currington (Mercury)
1957 (Sales): Bye Bye Love — The Everly Brothers (Cadence)
1957 (Disc Jockeys): Bye Bye Love — The Everly Brothers (Cadence)
1967: I’ll Never Find Another You — Sonny James (Capitol)
1977: Rollin’ With The Flow — Charlie Rich (Epic)
1987: A Long Line of Love — Michael Martin Murphey (Warner Bros.)
1997: Come Cryin’ to Me — Lonestar (BNA)
2007: Never Wanted Nothing More — Kenny Chesney (BNA)
2017: Body Like a Back Road — Sam Hunt (MCA)
2017 (Airplay): Do I Make You Wanna — Billy Currington (Mercury)
Lonestar moved to Shanachie Records for their latest album, Never Enders, which dropped earlier this year. Their own Dean Sams produced the record, which consists of ten songs.
The title track, a rocker about not giving up, was the lone single, which failed to chart. Richie McDonald co-wrote it, along with six other tracks. Those other compositions are of varying quality, with dreck interspersed with some good songs. I liked “Us” and “This Time,” but the rest were awful. “My Own Hometown” strives to be worthwhile but it comes off as an uninspired second rate “Everything’s Changed.”
I’ll give the band credit for attempting to keep this album country, but the rock elements smother the steel guitar so much, I’m surprised it’s still audible. The rest of the tracks aren’t much better and the album as a whole comes off uninspired. I’m sure they put effort into this, but there’s just nothing essential about Never Enders that even comes close to holding my attention.
My only noteworthy Lonestar connection of late is that they’re headlining a first-ever country music festival the next town over from me in May. I’m probably not going to attend without seeing the full lineup, but this is a big if not too exciting ‘get’ for the organizers. I just wish this album knew what it wanted to be and was much stronger.
Grade: C
Richie McDonald returned to the band in 2011, and in 213 they recorded a new album which was released on their own label.
The first single, ‘The Countdown’, is a well written song about looking forward to being reunited with a loved one, with a strong lead vocal from Richie McDonald; but the arrangement is musically bland and not very country with some irritating “oh-oh-ohs” interjected. It failed to catch fire with country radio, peaking well outside the top 40. The same fate befell ‘Maybe Someday’, another song whose arrangement has very little to identify it as country.
There were three further singles which sank without trace. The terrible ‘Party All Day’ is a dreadful brocountry mess of a song featuring shouting, a feeble rap, and a simplistic cliché-ridden sexist lyric. Embarrassingly bad. ‘Just the Rain’ is infinitely better, a delicate ballad about missing a loved one who has died, sung emotionally by McDonald (who wrote the song with Jeremy Bussey). It feels as if it is on the wrong album. The final single, ‘Pretty Good Day’ is pleasant but bland.
‘With My Eyes Open’ is an AC ballad. Also leaning in the AC direction, ‘If It Wasn’t For You’ is quite a pleasant love song. The title track is earnest but over-produced. ‘I Did It For The Girl’ is forgettable.
‘How Can She Be Everywhere’ is a loud rock number whose idea of a country star to name-drop is Big & Rich. ‘Oh Yeah’, which closes the record, is even worse, a witless repetitive rocker. ‘I Miss When’ is a boring song which the band has unsuccessfully tried to make interesting by adding weird experimental sound effects.
Download ‘Just The Rain’ and forget the rest.
Grade: D-
By 2006, the cracks in Lonestar’s commercial armor were beginning to appear. They were scoring Top 10 hits less consistently, their contract with BNA Records was nearing an end, and lead singer Richie McDonald was getting ready to leave the band and embark on a solo career. As a result, 2006’s Mountains feels as though it were phoned in by everyone involved, and there doesn’t seem to have been much effort expended to promote the album.
Mountains did find the band teaming up with a new producer, Mark Bright, and the album’s title track, which became the lead single, was an actually an improvement over Lonestar’s previous few efforts. The mandolin-led number, written by Richie McDonald, Larry Boone and Paul Nelson has a positive thinking theme, a trend during country’s “soccer mom” era, which was much bemoaned at the time, but in retrospect it seems rather benign compared to the trends that succeeded it. The song is catchy, but the lyrics are a bit trite – a problem that plagues many of the album’s tracks. It peaked at #10.
The piano led “Nothing to Prove” was the next single, and it was aimed squarely at the soccer moms, name dropping Van Morrison and detailing the drudgeries of the modern working woman. It was the worst performing single of Lonestar’s career, peaking at #51. BNA seemed to have little interest in promoting the album further, and as a result no further singles were issued.
Artistically, Mountains was a progression down the path the band embarked on with Lonely Grill, towards more pop and AC-leaning material with a little steel guitar thrown into the mix occasionally as an appeasement to country radio and fans. The formula was getting old by this point and the material was generally weak.
There are a couple of bright spots. “Hey God”, written by McDonald and Tommy Lee James, appealed to the contemporary Christian crowd. Though one of the album’s better tracks, it’s not terribly original, and the bombastic production gets in the way. Like most of the slower songs on the album, this one is turned into a power ballad, and it would have been more effective with a quieter and more stripped-down approach. To a lesser extent they fall into this trap again on the closing track “Always in the Band”, written by McDonald, Ron Harbin and Jerry Vandiver. It seems to be a semi-autobiographical number, perhaps inspired by McDonald’s impending departure from the band. It looks back at a number of significant life events, which always had to take a back seat to the narrator’s obligations to his band mates and fans. The production is restrained and tasteful until the last minute or so, when the swelling strings and power vocals start to become more prominent. Nevertheless, it’s a very good song and an appropriate capstone to the band’s first Richie McDonald era.
Nothing else is of much interest or worthy of commentary, so as a whole this album falls short of expectations.
Grade: C
Lonestar released their sixth studio album in 2005. They had enjoyed enormous success in the ten years since their debut, but Coming Home featured the band in the beginnings of their commercial decline. This transition period saw them switch producers to Justin Niebank and score just one top ten single.
That lone top ten, “You’re Like Coming Home” peaked at #8. The mid-tempo rocker is perfect radio fodder and I quite enjoy the beat, but the lyric lacks depth. Power balled “I’ll Die Tryin,” which likely would’ve been a big hit just a few years earlier, stalled at #48. Consequently, both of the singles were recorded by Emerson Drive on their What If album a year earlier.
Coming Home featured twelve tracks, with five co-written by Richie McDonald. The best of these is “Too Bottles of Beer,” a lovely mid-tempo fiddle and steel soaked ballad about a couple bonding over the titular beverage. The rest have good production values offset by terrible lyrical compositions. McDonald’s bandmate Michael Britt co-wrote “Noise,” which is lyrically identical to the Kenny Chesney hit of the same name, but a totally different song. It’s a far better presentation than Chesney’s take on the topic, which peaked at #6 earlier this year.
Coming Home is a squarely commercial album packed with filler and little worth. It’s a far cry better than anything coming out of Nashville these days, which is a plus, but it still doesn’t make for essential listening. Despite the annoying repetitiveness, I do like “I Am A Man,” which has a good message. But I couldn’t find much of anything that truly blew me away.
Grade: B-
By the time Lonestar released Let’s Be Us Again in 2004, the country music landscape had been brutally transformed from a country music with ever increasing rock elements into essentially rock music with country elements such as fiddle and steel guitar tossed into the mix, often gratuitously. Most of the fiddle heard during this are seemingly more Cajun than country, and lead guitar solos often seemed to owe nothing at all to country music.
In order to maintain radio airplay Lonestar co-opted the rock sounds while trying to maintain some country elements. The transition really began in 1999 with the Lonely Grill album, which had its sales buoyed by the remarkable success of “Amazed”, clearly their career hit.
The cost was high as each succeeding album was less country than its predecessor and more superficial. Gone was the Texan honky-tonk swagger, replaced by power ballads and Eagles-like country rockers. Worse yet, the John B Stetson hats and cowboy boots were replaced by attire that would have worked for N’SYNC or New Kids on The Block.
This is not to say that Let’s Be Us Again is a bad album, far from it. It is simply isn’t a very good album, the next to the last gasp of a band losing its way. In the short run the move paid off, but after two more top ten albums, the bands sales would slide toward the abyss. The song charted at #4.
The album opens up with “County Fair”, a pleasant if pointless rocker that is little more than a laundry list of things that one might do at a county fair. Some of the guitar riffs sound stolen from “Sweet Home Alabama” but with some fiddle tossed in.
Twenty bucks buys ten coupons
Two ears of corn and one ride on
The tilt-a-whirl with your favorite girl
Keep on walking down the midway
Three-eyed goats and games to play
Step right up, carny says try your luck
You can tell the sweet smell of summer in the air
Whole town shuts down, everybody’s gonna be there
Next up is “Class Reunion (That Used To Be Us)” a look back at how people have changed over the decade since graduation. The song was issued as a single and reached #16. While I think the lyrics celebrated a tenth reunion, I think it would be more meaningful in the context of a twentieth or later reunion.
I had a drink with some buds, played a lot of catch up
Danced with my date from the prom
But as hard as I tried until I closed my eyes
Everybody I knew was gone
There was Mr. Finch – he taught English and French
He was dancing with a couple of canes
And that homecoming queen, yeah, the girl of my dreams
S He didn’t even remember my nameThat used to be us; we used to be cool
With the music cranked up, hanging out after school
That used to be Jill, that used to be Joe
Tell me, where in the world did we all go?
That used to be us
I would describe “Let Us Be Us Again” as a straight ahead subdued power ballad – it could have been sung by any band but Richie McDonald had a hand in writing it, so Lonestar recorded it.
I really do not feel like doing a song by song analysis of this album since most of the rest of the songs are simply okay, mostly generic with some good melodic hooks. Skipping to track eleven we find the song that typifies the album in the rather wordy, “Mr. Mom”. The song isn’t bad, in fact it is rather amusing, but it seemed to appeal more to people who really didn’t much care for country music in general or Lonestar in particular. I knew the end was near for Lonestar when my wife opined that she liked the song. “Mr. Mom” would prove to be the last #1 for Lonestar and, although two more scattered top ten records would follow, the band started losing traction after this song.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah
Lost my job, came home mad
Got a hug and a kiss and that’s too bad
She said, “I can go to work until you find another job”
I thought I like the sound of that
Watch TV and take long naps
Go from a hard working dad to being Mr. MomWell, Pampers melt in a Maytag dryer
Crayons go up one drawer higher
Rewind Barney for the fifteenth time
Breakfast at six, naps at nine
There’s bubblegum in the baby’s hair
Sweet potatoes in my lazy chair
Been crazy all day long
And it’s only Monday, Mr. Mom
Track twelve is “From There To Here” with Randy Owen of Alabama making a guest appearance, on an up-tempo song celebration of love. Randy, of course, is a superlative vocalist and this song is right up his alley:
Brothers Wilber and Orville Wright
Built wings out of wood and steel
Folks said that thing’ll never fly
They said, “Watch, I bet it will”
We’ve been defyin’ gravity now goin’ on a hundred years
It was paper wings, faith, and dreams
That’s how we got from there to hereA nickel brought a soda pop way back then
And a movie only cost a dime
He came home with a scar and a purple heart
She waited all that time
Today they’ll cut a golden wedding cake
How’d they made it all those years?
It had to be tough; they just said it was love
That’s how they got from there to hereYou either do or you don’t believe
That it can or can’t be done
An ounce of faith and a touch of grace
And it can happen to anyone
If I had to pick a best song from the album, it would be “Somebody’s Someone” which harkens back to what the band had been doing earlier in their career. The song was never released as a single but charted due to random unsolicited airplay. Richie McDonald wrote this song by himself and without the posturing that often happens in co-writes, turned out a really meaningful song, probably the best song he has ever written. Coming so closely on the heels of 9/11, the song undoubtedly struck a chord with many listeners and definitely should have been released as a single:
Turn to the six o’clock news – another soldier dies
Tried to hide it, but I couldn’t help it: I had to cry
When my little boy asked me, “daddy, was he your friend”
I said, “no, I didn’t even know him”[Chorus]
But he was somebody’s someone, a neighbor, a husband
A brother, a father, and a mother’s only son
He was an uncle, a cousin, somebody’s best friend
And I’m sure at times a shoulder to lean on
He was somebody’s someoneSo I sat there in that chair and helped him understand
How this brave young man gave his life for our land
And although he’s someone we’ll never know
To you and me he is a hero[Chorus]
To the world he was a total stranger
Who kept us safe and out of danger
But now he’s just a picture on TV
Somebody’s memory[Chorus]
He was somebody’s someone
Up until this point I had purchased Lonestar albums as they were released, but this album marked the end of my Lonestar purchases. I give this album a C+ mostly on the strength of the last three cuts on the album, which I regard as the strongest.
The band’s fourth album was released in June 2001. Producer Dann Huff gave the somewhat generic rock-pop-country hybrid music a commercial sheen which appealed to fans, but has already dated.
The title track, a soaring ballad which shows off Richie McDonald’s voice at its best, was another big hit for them – not only a chart topper, but selling over half a million copies. An emotional song about a loving father stuck working on the road with a pretty melody and swelling strings, the passionate vocal just saves it from sentimentality. McDonald also gets a songwriting credit, alongside Gary Baker and Frank Myers (who had a shortlived attempt at a country career as a duo in the 90s). Unfortunately it is by far the best song on the album.
Follow up ‘With Me’ broke Lonestar’s streak of five straight #1s, only just squeezing into the top 10. Unsurprising, because it really isn’t a very good, or country, song. Unsubtle, intrusive production doesn’t help a boring lyric without much of a tune.
‘Not A Day Goes By’ was back to the ballads, and was much more successful, reaching #3. A wistful song about the power of a memory, McDonald sings it beautifully. It is more AC than country, but very well done.
The final single, Mark McGuinn’s ‘Unusually Unusual’ made it to #12. Huff’s production and arrangement choices are intrusive; the song itself tries to depict a charmingly quirky girl, but falls a bit flat for me.
‘I Want To Be The One’ is quite a good song about unrequited love, written by Chuck Cannon, Lari White and Gary Nicholson, but very pop backing vocals dominate it.
Most of the other tracks have strong rock leanings, with even the ballads loud, and are not particularly interesting.
The remains their second best seller, after the ‘Amazed’-spurred monster success of Lonely Grill. However, I would only bother downloading ‘I’m Already There’, and perhaps ‘Not A Day Goes By’.
Grade: C-
For their third outing, Lonestar joined forces with a new production team consisting of Dann Huff, Sam Ramage and Bob Wright. The result was a slicker and more pop-oriented sound and the best-selling album of the band’s career with more than three million units sold in the United States alone.
The lead single was the beat-driven, lyrically light party song “Saturday Night”, with a chorus consisting of song’s title being spelled out repetitively. Such a terrible song would be a monster hit today, but in the pre-bro country era, radio wasn’t impressed and it died at #47. I had never heard it before and did not even know it had been a single.
“Saturday Night” may have underperformed, but the album’s subsequent singles all rose to #1. The best-remembered of these is “Amazed”, the band’s signature tune which was also a huge crossover hit, reaching #1 on the Hot 100 — marking the first time a country act occupied that slot since Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton scored a #1 pop hit with “Islands in the Stream” in 1983. “Smile”, “What About Now” and “Tell Her” were the remaining singles. All of them rank among Lonestar’s best loved hits, and deservedly so. These songs solidified Lonestar’s position as one of the era’s most successful — perhaps THE most successful — country bands. The upbeat “What About Now” is a nice change of pace from the ballads. “Smile” and “Tell Her” are a little more AC-leaning than I would like, but both are decent songs.
The album cuts are a little more of a mixed bag. I enjoyed the reggae-flavored Don Henry-Benmont Tench number “Don’t Let’s Talk About Lisa” and “I’ve Gotta Find You”, written by Richie McDonald with Ron Harbin and Marty Dodson. None of the other tracks are particularly memorable, with the exception of the closing number which is an acoustic remake of Lonestar’s earlier hit “Everything’s Changed”, which proves that a gifted vocalist and a good song can shine without the aid of glossy production.
Lonely Grill is a must-have for diehard Lonestar fans, but more casual listeners will probably be just as happy with their Greatest Hits package.
Grade: B
Lonestar released their second album, and last with John Rich, in June 1997. Crazy Nights continued in the tradition of their debut by keeping Don Cook and Wally Wilson at the helm.
The bright, effervescent and otherwise excellent “Come Cryin’ To Me” led the album and became the band’s second #1 single. The perfectly styled tune, with Cook’s signature percussion beats, was one of four tunes co-written by Rich.
They followed with “You Walked In,” a mid-tempo ballad that stalled at #12. The song, co-written by Robert John “Mutt” Lange, is sexy without being overt:
Everybody’s talkin’ ’bout the supermodel world
Cindy, Naomi and that whole bunch of girls
Redheads, brunettes and blondes with blue eyes
They come in every shape yea they come in every size
You know I love everything they do
I check ’em out on every Pay-Per-View
Oh, but honey that was way before I met you.
And then
***
You walked in with legs up to your neck
You walked in I’m a physical wreck
You walked in I’ve lost my cool babe
But what’d you expect
When you walk in baby love begins
When you walk by baby ooh my my
When you come around, my jaw hits the ground
When you shake your thing I jump outta my skin
When you cross the floor I scream “more baby more”
When you flash your smile you drive me wild
Yea, yea, yea, yea, yea
***
Everybody’s checkin’ out the glossy magazines
Madonna, Diana, you know the whole scene
The covergirls, the centerfolds and every movie star
And all those pretty ladies down there at the local bar
I couldn’t think of nothin’ better to do
Than checkin’ out a little wiggle or two
Oh, but honey that was way before I met you
“You Walked In,” may’ve been too left of center for country radio at the time, but it’s laughably tame in comparison to what the likes of Dierks Bentley, Keith Urban and Sam Hunt have gotten away with in the past few years. Piano ballad “Say When,” another Rich co-write faired just as poorly, peaking at #13.
They regained their stride with the album’s final and strongest single, the Richie McDonald co-written “Everything’s Changed.” The song tells the story of a woman returning to a now unrecognizable town and the man she left behind who still lives there. It’s not only my favorite song they’ve ever done, it’s their finest recorded moment to date:
Funny you should show up after all of these years
Yeah things sure have changed around here
Seen a lot of strangers since they put that interstate through
No this ain’t the same town that we once knew
***
They put up a plant where we used to park
That ol’ drive-in’s a new Wal-Mart
The caf¨¦ is closed where our names were carved on that corner booth
Yeah, everything’s changed except for the way I feel about you
***
That westbound to Santa Fe don’t stop here anymore
You were one of the last to get on board
That street that we grew up on you wouldn’t recognize
Girl nothing’s been the same since you said good-bye
Rich, who was still known as the band’s other lead singer, took the helm on two of the three non-singles he co-wrote. “John Doe on a John Deere” has all the tropes now associated with bro-country expect the woman isn’t treated like an object. Meanwhile “What Do We Do With The Rest of the Night” is simply pure fluff. His final co-write, the title track, has forceful production but not much passion either lyrically or vocally from McDonald.
“Keys To My Heart,” which McDonald co-wrote, is a pleasant contemporary rocker with ample fiddle and steel. The song doesn’t have any meat lyrically, so while it’s enjoyable to listen to, it’s just not a great song overall.
“Cheater’s Road,” which was co-written by Jason Sellers, saw a second life when Chalee Tennison included it on 2003’s Parading In The Rain. I like her version much better than theirs, although it’s truly not that compelling of a song to begin with. The final cut, “Amie” is a by-the-books cover of the Pure Prairie League classic that works surprisingly well.
Crazy Nights will forever be known as the final album before everything changed. Not only would Rich exit the group, but they would ditch their producers and cowboy hats for a more mainstream sound and their greatest success. Here is the band just two years before the craziness, with a clear direction and a couple of worthy songs.
I will always regard this era, 1995-1999, as Lonestar at their best – the songs were smart and interesting and Cook’s signature style fit them well. McDonald, though, was clearly the stronger singer. While John has shown improvement with Big & Rich, he clearly isn’t in top vocal form, here. I don’t blame BNA for pushing McDonald as the face of the band at all.
As an album, Crazy Nights is good but not great. There’s nothing truly essential beyond the lead and final singles.
Grade: B
Lonestar kicked off their recording career with the eponymous album Lonestar. Released in October 1995, the album hit the streets on the strength of the successful single “Tequila Talkin’” which was released in August 1995 and reached #8. There would be four more singles issued after the album was released. The album received mixed reviews upon its release, more than a few critics viewing the band as a lightweight version of Shenandoah, a comparison I did not feel to be very valid.
The album was definitely decent honky-tonk country music, with the band augmented by a solid corps of Nashville session men such as Bruce Bouton (pedal steel ), Mark Casstevens (acoustic guitar), Brent Mason (electric guitar) and Rob Hajacos (fiddle) and such distinguished vocal harmonists as Curtis Young and John Wesley Ryles. Unless otherwise stated, Richie McDonald handles the vocals on the singles.
The album opens up with the up-tempo ballad “Heartbroke Every Day” from the pens of Bill LaBounty, Cam King and Rick Vincent. This album track featured John Rich on lead vocals, and would be the fifth single released, reaching #18. I like Rich’s vocal, which has a bit of a bluegrass feel to it.
Why do I do this to myself
Why do I want the one that wants somebody else
Don’t you know
I’d get my heart broke every day if I couldWhy do I always take the fall
I’d rather have you hurtin’ me than not have you at all
Don’t you know
I’d get my heart broke every day if I could
If I could
Don’t you know
I’d get my heart broke every day if I could
Track two was the first single released, “Tequila Talkin’” penned by Bill LaBounty and Chris Waters (the brother of Holly Dunn). This single reached #8, the first top ten recording for the group:
I don’t know what they put in Cuervo that got me to say those things
Usually I wouldn’t care so much or make such a scene
But seeing you there in that dress you were wearing just drove me right out of my head
So don’t hold me responsible for anything I might’ve saidIt was just the tequila talkin’
When I told you I’m still not over you
I get a little sentimental when I’ve had one or two
And that tear in my eye was the salt and the lime
Not the memory of you walkin’
If I said I’m still in love with you
It was just the tequila talkin’
John Rich, Don Cook and Wally Wilson wrote “I Love The Way You Do That’ – a good song but the intro sounds too much like the intro to track two.
“Running Away With My Heart” was penned by Michael Britt, Sam Hogin and Mark D Sanders. This would be the third single released from the album and would reach #8. This song is a mid-tempo ballad, which features some nice steel guitar work by Bruce Bouton.
Hey Buddy can you get me some faster wheels
I got a heartache nippin’ at my heels
I’ll be hurtin’ if she gets a big head start
First that girl stole my attention
Not to mention all my affection
Now she’s running away with my heart
“What Would It Take” was written by Billy Lawson, Larry Boone and Paul Nelson, and is a slow ballad with heavy Nashville Sound string accompaniment of the kind that Billy Sherrill used with George Jones and David Houston. I think that this song, issued 15-20 years earlier, could have been a big single, but by 1995 it was very much an anachronism.
I held the world in my arms
I threw away the moon for the stars
Couldn’t see the forest for the trees
Couldn’t see the love in front of meWhat would it take to take me back
Rebuild that bridge, retrace my tracks
I would give all I own
For one little stepping stone
What would it take to take me back
The redoubtable trio of John Rich, Larry Boone and Paul Nelson contributed “Does Your Daddy Know About Me”, an up-tempo honky-tonk song with solid steel and fiddle accompaniment that would have made a good single:
Well you say your daddy is a real cool dude and you keep no secrets from him
Well he knows you got a wild hair, knows your kinda out there and knows about your crazy friends
And he done found out about the night you snuck out with the Cadillac keys
But darlin’ does your daddy know about meWell he knows you been skippin’ them Sunday School meetings
He’s heard how fast you drive
Knows you got an attitude, seen your little tattoo, but he lets all that slide
And I bet my boots that he think he knows you from A to Z
But darlin’ does your daddy know about me
Billy Lawson’s “Ragtop Cadillac” probably was very popular with line dancers. The lyrics are nothing special but it has a rhythm and feel very similar to “Boot Scootin’ Boogie”.
“No News” was the second single and the first #1 record for the group reaching #1 in both the US and Canada. The song was written by Phil Barnhart, Sam Hogin, and Mark D. Sanders, and tells the story about a man whose woman has left him without telling him.
She said “It’s just a woman thing” and pulled out of the drive
I said not to worry I’m an understanding guy
I’ve heard that when you love someone you gotta let ’em go
She hollered “When I find myself you’ll be the first to know”
Ooh no newsI learned to do the laundry, feed the cat, and clean the house
I promised to be patient while she worked her problems out
When she packed her bags, her destination wasn’t clear
But I sensed that her intentions were honest and sincere
Ooh no news
Chick Rains has written a number of fine songs, but “Paradise Knife and Gun Club” is nothing special, a dance number that makes for a decent album track.
Richie McDonald and Kyle Green co-wrote “When Cowboys Didn’t Dance”, the only song McDonald had a part in writing. The song was the fourth single from the album reaching only #45 (but #18 in Canada). I don’t think I would have released this song as a single, although it makes a decent enough album track.
This would be one of two albums issued by the original lineup of Richie McDonald (lead vocals, acoustic guitar), John Rich (bass, vocals), Michael Britt (lead guitar, background vocals), Keech Rainwater (drums), and Dean Sams (keyboards). Other than John Rich’s contributions, the band relied on outside writers for material. Richie McDonald would emerge as a co-writer on subsequent albums, but I have doubts as to how essential were his contributions to the process.
I would give this album a B+. Of five Lonestar studio albums in my collection, this one is the one I listen to with the greatest frequency as it is the most consistently good album of the bunch.
My Kind of Country 