Mr. Byrd's current hit single, "Put Your Hand In Mine" the first cut of this occasionally decent but mostly lackluster CD is a fine example of what is always right and yet always wrong about most of this black-hatted fellow's output.

Virtually all of Tracy's admittedly numerous hits ...well... they are like eggs. They seem like rock-solid good modern country on the outside, but that is a VERY thin shell that when broken on repeated hearing, shatters to reveal a rather viscous and cliched mealy-mouthed yolk.

This first track exemplifies this to a T. What on second or fifth hearing is a nice touching song about a Dad leaving home and his kid giving him a hand-tracing to comfort him when he gets lonely in his new place... after 40 hearings reveals itself to be but another bloodless, treacley ballad, just another hat act. Which is a shame because Mr. Byrd has OFTEN rallied about his lifelong passion for REAL country, and even had a super-dandy hit covering Johnny Paycheck's early 70's powerhouse "Don't Take Her She's All I Got" a few years back. Even more of a shame is that the man IS talented and he has a nice voice, but unfortunately, ostensibly to have a hit-making career, his material has to be created/approved by the cookie-cutter Nashville machine that is today's Top 40 country reality, thereby taking all of his talent and basically flushing it down the hat act toilet.

Save for a few tunes, this whole album suffers from the same positive and negatives. The title cut has some nice lyrical ideas, but is couched in a boring production sounding like a project for a class titled "Country Music Producing of the 21st Century 101." Same for "Can't have one without the Other." Same for the pop-ballad garbage that is "A Little Love." And so on .. and so on...

But this album is indeed not a TOTAL washout. Shades of channeling Merle Haggard come through on the dynamite, "Ain't it Just Like a Woman." Killer bass lines and a sweet fiddle lick make "Undo The Right" a nifty song and "Something to Brag About," well, it may be the ONLY song on this mediocre album that lives up to its title.

Perhaps when Mr. Byrd is even MORE ensconced perhaps he will have the autonomous clout to start making the kind of records he grew up covering, listening to, and being influenced by. Perhaps also his CD''s won't be such a yawning disappointment when that happens as well. Let's hope so.