I have to admit that I wanted to hate this album. When country legends
have every right to complain about their castigation from Nashville's big
labels and country radio, while young bands like this one get oodles of
notice and awards, but still have no songs I've heard on the radio, my
suspicions perk. With the horrific way country radio treats the old guard,
the backlash is that everyone that gathers a cult following, whether they
DESERVE mainstream acceptance or not, then registers the same whine and lament, with the implication that they are just "too good" for radio.

Well, I was pleasntly surprised, if not completely convinced, by this disc. If you are a fan of this "Hee Haw"-epithet-named group, then I'm sure this album will be a delight. For those of us still undecided, this disc is
pleasant enough, but its flaws and identity crises keep it from being
something that you should rush out and throw down your twelve bucks for.

First of all, this band is trying to sell itself (I think), as the niftiest garage-country band around, and it sure as hell rocks. Its instrumentations, with dobro, steel guitar and mandolin, definitely have a
delcious traditional flavor to be savored. But, the songs are all so
perfectly slick, so not with a brylcreamed-hair out of place, they sound
dangerously close to being products of the Nashville artifice they are
ostensibly trying to quash.

Such neo-1960's country radio tunes as "Wild One," "Hurtin' Song"
and "My Name Is Mudd" are fun and well-done, but they don't sound like they have much biscuits-and-gravy in them. Instead, production and calculation seeps through. This disturbing fact makes one almost think these songs veer closer to a parody of the style, rather than a homage. The album is also so chock-full of material, with 14 tunes, that some lyrics in the notes would definitely be helpful.

There are some standouts though, like the Buck Owens cover that opens the disc. "There goes My Love" is a pleasure, as is "Storybook Endings (If You Stop Believin')." But other tunes, such as "You Flew The Coop" and "Seven Nights to Rock," are indistinguishable from songs that would be making FUN of themselves on someone else's album. That becomes borderline annoying. However, this uneven disc winds up on the great note it started with, on the bouncily nifty "Change The Way I Look" and "Georgia On A Fast Train."

The main thing that keeps this album from a 2 1/2 or a 2 is, ironically,
the aspect that keeps it from being rated higher. Hard work IS a true country value, and these five fellas certainly have made a colossal effort to seduce you with their attempt to channel 1960's WSM Radio's Top 10 Lists. That in itself is indeed a virtue. But the seams show so much, and listeners may be so confused about what the point is, that they may be turned off.

A great effort, and a not-horrible album by any means, but if one
wants this kind of music, I recommend you watch old Hee Haw reruns and see the real thing on TNN. You can be SURE songs on that show won't be sung by tenderfoots who may never have run shoeless through a cornfield, or who think John Deere was a former Speaker of the House. With these slicksters, I'm not convinced they pass these "reality-check for Country" tests.