Country music from a fan's point of view since 2008
After a pair of non-commercial albums that found him venturing into gospel and bluegrass, Angels and Alcohol, which was released last week, is both a return to form for Alan Jackson and his strongest collection since he parted ways with Arista Records five years ago.
Like the vast majority of Jackson’s catalog, Angels and Alcohol was produced by Keith Stegall. In many ways it is reminiscent of their best work from the 90s; there are no concessions to current trends and no attempts to chase radio hits. The current single, “Jim and Jack and Hank”, which I reviewed earlier this month, currently resides at #47 on the charts. Despite being a fun and catchy uptempo number, it’s unlikely to rise much higher in the current commercial environment.
Although I stand by the B+ rating I gave the single, I would not include it among one of my favorites from the album, because there are other more substantive songs which which a fluffy lightweight song simply cannot compete. With all due respect to Alan Jackson the songwriter, who penned seven of the album’s songs, my favorites are the three he didn’t write. Troy Jones’ and Greg Becker’s “When God Paints” is a beautiful ballad, with lyrics that are rich with imagery about life’s simple pleasures. Even better is “The One You’re Waiting On” by Adam Wright and Shannon Wright, which finds the protagonist sitting in a bar, admiring his love interest from afar, knowing that he doesn’t stand much of a chance but wondering exactly what she is holding out for. “Gone Before You Met Me”, an uptempo number by Michael White and Michael P. Heeney is about a free spirit who has long since settled down, and when he finds he is still rambling, is relieved to discover that it was only a dream. Country music needs more songs like this.
Jackson’s own compositions are nothing to sneeze at, either. The opening track “You Can Always Come Home” finds him reassuring a child who is about to leave the nest, and the title track is a beautiful ballad that is vintage Alan Jackson. It would have been a huge hit 20 years ago, and even ten years ago it might have been given a fair shot by radio. The closing track “Mexico, Tequila and Me” finds Jackson switching back to Jimmy Buffett mode, and is reminiscent of “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere”.
I can’t find anything to complain about with this album. The current crop of singers who are doing their best to ruin country music (and largely succeeding), could learn a lot from Alan Jackson. There are no stretches or surprises here, just good old country music that will not leave Jackson’s fans disappointed. Sometimes that’s enough.
Grade: A
Aaron Tippin’s 1994 album Lookin’ Back At Myself showed some signs that Tippin the songwriter’s well of ideas was beginning to run dry. Though it earned gold certification, it failed to produce any Top 10 hits, so for his next effort, 1995’s Tool Box, Tippin finally relented and recorded some songs from some outside songwriters. This time around he only had a hand in writing two of the album’s songs, not including “Country Boy’s Tool Box”, which originally appeared on his previous album. The less said about that song, the better. Steve Gibson was back on board as producer.
Opening the door to other songwriters had little commercial impact — Tool Box reached gold status, matching the sales level of Lookin’ Back At Myself — but it did provide a fresh perspective that had been lacking from the prior year’s album.
The album opens with a catchy Dennis Linde number, “Ten Pound Hammer”, which would have been an excellent choice for a single. It was covered two years later by Barbara Mandrell for her final album. It is followed by the album’s first single “That’s As Close As I’ll Get To Loving You”, a slightly slicker-sounding number than what we had usually heard from Aaron up to this point. The record managed to reverse Aaron’s chart decline; it reached the #1 spot, becoming his first record to crack the Top 10 in two years. The album’s subsequent singles did not fare as well, however. “Without Your Love” only reached #22, while “Everything I Own” peaked at #51 and “How’s The Radio Know” a Tippin co-write with Michael P. Heeney stalled at #69. “How’s The Radio Know” is the album’s most traditional-sounding single; that and perhaps declining promotional support from the label may account for its poor chart performance.
There are some pleasant surprises among the album cuts. One of my favorites is “A Real Nice Problem To Have”, a Rick Bowles co-write with Tom Shapiro. Tippin also dusts off Billy Swan’s 1973 hit “I Can Help”. It’s not the type of song I’d expect Aaron Tippin to cover, but he pulls it off reasonably well. “You Gotta Start Somewhere”, another Tom Shapiro effort co-written by Bob Regan, is also quite good.
The album’s sole dud is the psuedo-title track, which, as noted earlier, was carried over from Tippin’s previous album. It is included here as an eleventh song. Had it been omitted, the album would not have suffered. Why it was resurrected is a mystery; I suspect that it was included because someone took a liking to “Tool Box” as an album title.
Tool Box was Tippin’s final album for RCA. As such, the label probably had little interest in promoting it too heavily with radio programmers. Nevertheless, it sold well and Aaron proved that he had a few more hits left in him when he moved to Lyric Street Records for his next release. Tool Box is a definite improvement over Tippin’s previous few albums; inexpensive copies are easy to find and worth picking up.
Grade: B+
Reba’s third album for MCA, released in July 1985, saw her on a roll both commercially and artistically. She had just won her first CMA Female Vocalist of the Year title in 1984, and was to win again in 1985 thanks partly to the success of this album. Her rich voice is at its best, and she exercises it on a selection of excellent songs, including a couple she wrote herself. Have I Got A Deal For You was also Reba’s first production credit, alongside the experienced Jimmy Bowen – an important step in her career development, at a time when not that many artists were co-producing their records. The record feels like a natural progression from its predecessor, My Kind Of Country, retaining the traditional feel, with some lovely fiddle from the legendary Johnny Gimble, and steel from Weldon Myrick, but using newly written songs where the latter had mixed old and new.
Only two singles were released, both reaching the top 10: the fiddle-heavy western swing of the title track, written by Michael P Heeney and Jackson Leap is enjoyable if one of the lesser moments here, and reached #6. The excellent and memorable ‘Only In My Mind’, one of the few songs Reba has written, got one spot higher, and deserved to do better still. It tells of the heartstopping moment when with “a move that would have made the wind stand still”, the protagonist’s husband asks her an unexpected question. The answer he gets is a devastating one:
“He said, ‘Have you ever cheated on me?’
I said, ‘Only in my mind’.”
Not an answer designed to make him feel any better, and delivered in a perfectly nuanced manner by Reba as she then addresses the man to whom she has an emotional connection she feels her husband could never understand. Reba also co-wrote ‘She’s The One Loving You Now’ with David Anthony and Leigh Reynolds, where a downbeat lyric sounds almost inappropriately cheery.
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 the time came to move on from Warner Brothers and try a new start, with a new label (MCA), new producer (Jimmy Bowen), and new sound (back to country, albeit less hardcore than his earliest work). The appropriately titled Blue Skies Again was the first of John’s comeback attempts.
The leadoff single, ‘When Your Yellow Brick Road Turns Blue’, failed to crack the top 40, although it is an excellent song with a beautiful melody with nods to ‘Over The Rainbow’, and has one of John’s finest vocal performances, as he portrays a husband offering unconditional love to a restless wife in the process of leaving him to pursue her dreams:
“You say that somewhere over the rainbow there’s a star that youve been wishing on
Well, is the grass really all that greener than here where you belong?
I hope that you find what you’re after and all of your dreams come true
But remember that I’ll always be here when your yellow brick road turns blue.”
John’s most successful single on MCA was ‘Somewhere Between Ragged And Right’, a duet with Waylon Jennings which Jennings wrote with Roger Murrah. The only song on the album to venture away from relationship themes, it sets out a series of interesting similes but offers no real resolution:
“We’re all polyester poets and pickers of a kind
With far too many questions for the answers in our minds…
Like a busload of taxi drivers learning how to fly
We’re on automatic pilot driftin’ through our lives.”Sadly, the pairing of two of the most iconic and distinctive voices in country music doesn’t really work, as the two make no attempt to blend and seem to be fighting for precedence on the lines where they sing together.
The third and last single from the album was ‘It’s Hard To Keep This Ship Together’, which John wrote with Fred Carter Jr. It was the closest track to the more rock-influenced sound of recent years, but failed to make an impact at radio; not altogether surprising, as not only had the tide of commercial country music moved in the direction of the neotraditionalists, but the song itself is not very interesting. The metaphor of stormy weather addressed to a rocky relationship works better in the post-breakup title track, a mournful ballad written by Michael P Heeney with some sweet fiddle from Joe Spivey.
‘There’s Nothing Left For Me To Take For Granted’, written by John with Lionel A Delmore is another gloomy look at the aftermath of a broken relationship, and is a very good song as the protagonist finds all the couple’s old friends want nothing to do with him, and “the hardest part for me is stayin’ sober., and livin’ inthe past with broken dreams”. On a more positive note, John wrote a cheerful mid-tempo love song with his wife Jamie, ‘Just For You’. It is not particularly memorable, but pleasant filler.
My Kind of Country 