Country music from a fan's point of view since 2008
It’s always a good news day when you hear Mark Chesnutt has released new music. His first album in eight years is due next month, with the encouraging title, Tradition Lives, and in the mean time here is the first single.
Written by Tony Ramey and Trey Matthews, this is an excellent song about the aftermath of a breakup, loaded with irony. The man is missing his ex, and even kind of stalking her, but is making no actual effort to get her back. Yet he is surprised that she hasn’t come back to him. Plaintively he bemoans the fact that she doesn’t ring him, even though he admits he hasn’t tried calling her either. Somehow one isn’t surprised it’s not working out – but Mark’s emotionally compelling vocals make one sympathise with his pain regardless:
I haven’t wrote
I haven’t called
Ain’t sent one single rose at all
I haven’t showed up at her door
Don’t go to places that she goes
I’ve moved on for all she knows
That should make her want me more
She oughta miss me by nowShe oughta pick up that phone
For crying out loud this has gone on too long
She should’ve come to her senses
And want to work it all out
As bad as I’m hurtin’
She oughta miss me by now
Chesnutt’s voice is as good as ever, and the solid country backings and a prominent steel guitar make this mid-paced tune a delight to listen to. I await the new album with bated breath.
Grade: A+
After leaving RCA, Tracy struck out on his own. His last album to date was released on his own label in 2006). Freedom from commercial concerns led him to his most mature work, and the best album of his career. He produced the set alongside Mike Geiger, and they did a fine job showcasing the songs tastefully.
My very favourite track is the incisive and gloriously judgmental cheating song, ‘Cheapest Motel’ in which a man loses everything after a fling:
They used the Bible for a coaster
And it never crossed their mind
Maybe they should have opened it
Instead of that high dollar wine
But he ends up exchanging his happy marriage and family for a lonely existence:
The cheapest motel in town cost him everything
It was written by Cole Deggs, Mike Geiger and Trey Matthews. It was the lead single, and got a little airplay, but really deserved to do much better.
Almost as good, the sober realisation of the title track shows a man who has come to understand his failings. He looks back on a lifetime’s rash choices, now that his marriage is collapsing.
What I want is to give up
Just let go and walk out on us
What I need is to see this through
Oh, and find a way back to you
The last thing that I reach for every evening
Is a woman who I can’t reach any more
Time has worn the new off of the feeling
And right now I wanna just walk out the door
But what I want and what I need
Have always been different things
This excellent song was written by John Ramey, Brice Long and Bobby Taylor, and is interpreted with the just the right amount of resignation by Tracy. A stripped down production gives it the perfect support.
A similarly rueful attitude dominates ‘She Was Smart’, in which a rich man finds out money isn’t enough to make up for his lack of commitment to his girlfriend.
Sweet but not overly sentimental, ‘Just One Woman’ is a ballad with a spoken introduction about an old man’s lifelong love for his wife. Also rather sweet, ‘A Cowboy And A Dancer’ is a story song in which a cowboy down on his luck meets a girl whose dreams of musical theatre stardom have sputtered out by working as a stripper to put herself through college. A shared ride out of Texas turns into romance.
‘Saltwater Cowboy’ is a lighthearted and likeable beach song. ‘The Biggest Thing In Texas’ is a fun little slice of western swing which allows Tracy to affectionately dig at his fellow Texans’ pride in their home state:
Pride is the biggest thing in Texas
‘Better Places Than This’ the second and last single sadly failed to chart, but it is an entertaining honky tonker with sadness at its heart. In response to being thrown out of a second-rate bar where he’s been drowning his sorrows a little too long, the protagonist declares:
Keep your old cold shoulder and your lukewarm beer
…
I haven’t lost anything here I can’t live without
Can’t you see everything’s already gone that I ever cared about?
I’ve been thrown out of better places than this
I know where to go and I know what to kiss
I’ve heard it all before from my sweet angel’s lips
‘Before I Die’ offers up a bucket list with a wistfully delivered lyric and lovely melody. Not outstanding, but nicely done.
The closing ‘Hot Night In The Country’ is a rare Tracy Byrd co-writing credit (alongside Mark Nesler and Tony Martin) but is a bit dull. ‘The More I Feel Rockin’’ is a cheerful mid-tempo celebration of refusing to slow down despite growing older – pleasant filler but enjoyable enough.
Overall, though, this is the best album Tracy has ever recorded, and is an essential purchase. That makes it all the more disappointing that he has gone silent since its release.
Grade: A
Virginia-born fifth generation fiddler Clinton Gregory made a modest splash in the early 90s as an independent artist who nonetheless gained some airplay. His best remembered song is probably 1991’s top 30 hit ‘If It Weren’t For Country Music (I’d Go Crazy)’. It’s over 15 years since we have heard anything from him, so this unheralded release came out of the blue. He has found a new home on indie label Melody Roundup, which is basically a music publisher whose first CD release this is. The company’s catalog provides the songs, and luckily they are of a uniformly high standard.
Clinton’s sweet tenor and lovely fiddle playing are as good as ever, and his song selection is stellar, if leaning towards the downbeat. The production (by Gregory himself with publisher Jamie Creasy) is tasteful and restrained, with Clinton playing fiddle on eight of the twelve tracks.
‘Too Country For Nashville’ recalls the Nashville of the early 1980s, back when Randy Travis was “washing pots and pans”, when Clinton first came to town. He complains about the lack of any alternative destination for a country songwriter; after all,
You say I’m too country for Nashville
You could be right, these days that may be so
But if I’m too country for Nashville
Where in the hell would you like me to go?
Some may point out that he forgets the Texas option when dismissing the likes of New York, LA and Muscle Shoals as alternatives, but that would take away the point of the song.
A single earlier this year, ‘Bridges’, written by Gary Hannan and Marty Brown paints the picture of a selfish jerk whose woman is dealing with the fallout and having to apologize for his bad behaviour. The man is clearly not worth her self-sacrificial behaviour, and clearly she’s going to reach the end of her patience eventually:
Sometimes she hates how much she still loves him
He’s slowly burning bridges
Faster than she can build them
Jerrod Niemann seems to have something of a split personality musically. He is a competent if not particularly distinctive singer with a nice grainy quality at times, who seems determined to compensate for that by over-ornamenting his records with gimmicks. The songs are interspersed with a set of comic sketches conceived by Jerrod with Dave Brainard (with whom he shares production credits). These share the fatal flaw of not actually being funny. Most of them weren’t even funny the first time I listened to them, with the sole exception of a pointed if unoriginal little jab at radio demographics and teenage girls not being interested in drinking songs. After listening through the number of times I needed to in order to review this, I hated them. Self-indulgent in the extreme, these make an excellent argument to download selected tracks. There is a particularly annoying piece right at the end which implies one needs to be drunk to appreciate the album. I’m not so sure that’s wrong, either.
His current big hit, ‘Lover, Lover’, which has propelled this album to good early sales figures, is a remake of a 90s pop song which is very catchy with multi tracked vocals all from Jerrod himself, even though it has very little to do with country music. There is one other cover, Robert Earl Keen’s double-entendre ‘The Buckin’ Song’, which has some fine instrumental breaks but is tiresome to anyone sober over the age of about 15. Keen is a significant Texas songwriter, but this particular song is juvenile. However, I was familiar with Jerrod’s name as a songwriter, and had hopes for this album. He has written or co-written all but two of the tracks, most often with one Richie Brown.
In fact, one of my favourite tracks was a song which was already familiar. ‘How Can I Be So Thirsty’ was one of my favourite tracks from last year’s John Anderson release, which Jerrod wrote with Anderson and Billy Joe Walker Jr. Jerrod’s version is enjoyable if lacking the vocal punch Anderson brought to this hangover complaint. Jerrod has an obviously penchant for the subject matter, as Jerrod’s only solo composition here is the far less likable ‘For Everclear’, a drunken college (I hope) student’s song rather implausibly involving getting way too close to one of his teachers (an ex-stripper). Niemann appears to be about ten years past the point at which this song would be appropriate.
‘One More Drinking Song’ is a relaxed-sounding defence of that sub-genre, which has no actual reasons included, and has an irritating repeated hey-hey-hey in the chorus, but is good-humored and bearable. It was released as a single last year, but sank without trace. ‘Down In Mexico’ is very nice sounding, but a rather generic Chesney-style song about the impossibility of being depressed on the beach.
Written with Dallas Davidson and Jamey Johnson is the jazzy loungy ‘They Should Have Named You Cocaine’ which is a pretty good song about a woman with a hold on the singer, which would have been more pleasing to listen to without the pointless artificial sound effects in the mix. ‘Bakersfield’ is a pleasant sounding ballad about nostalgia for a weekend’s romance in California. Co-written with Wayd Battle and Steve Harwell, the song isn’t bad but the production gets a bit busy towards the end. ‘I Hope You Get What You Deserve’, a generous goodbye wish to an ex, also has too much going on musically. All these songs might have sounded better with a more stripped down approach.
My Kind of Country 