Although it looked like this was going to be a bit of a respite from what was beginning to feel like an endless onslaught of punk, I also wasn’t especially looking forward to what promised to be a return to country music.
But damn me if Joe Ely didn’t win me over with the first song, Cornbread Moon. I think a lot of that is owed to accordion player “Ponty” Bone who gives the whole thing a bit of a zydeco feel, but it’s such an infectious bit of blues-inflected boogie it was hard not to get dragged in to the fun.
This feeling continues, a kind of blues/rock/country fusion, through the songs Boxcars, I’ll Be Your Fool, and into the line-dance ready Honky Tonkin’, a cover of a Hank Williams song. There’s a bit more traditional country, complete with the steel guitar of Lloyd Mains, in the middle of the album, such as Jericho and Honky Tonk Masquerade, but throughout Ely takes country and adds just that little bit more to it to make it all rather enjoyable.
My favourite for lyrics was West Texas Waltz, with a parade of humourous folksy happenings, where everything is okay because you can “dance like the Dickens to the West Texas Waltz”. This includes a life where
“My pickup needs a tune-up,
I better get up and make up
My mind to get on it today
The tractor's been actin' up
And the sewer lines are backin' up”
I better get up and make up
My mind to get on it today
The tractor's been actin' up
And the sewer lines are backin' up”
or a cow dog that “can’t tell a cow form a horse”.
The track ends up with the narrator taking a “young lady banker” out to the waltz, and how the only thing better than dancing the West Texas Waltz is what you get up to after dancing the West Texas Waltz.
As I said, great fun throughout, not the usual run of country music misery; this is a more music for a hoe-down, and it was a very pleasant surprise.
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