Customer Reviews

Dowdy Ferry Road

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

They just keep getting better on each cd they put out. & there Nights & Forever cd is just as awesome as all there others. Id go out & buy this cd along with there others. Im a really big fan of theres & always will be.There music awesome & very relaxing to listen to.

I literally wore holes thru the vinyl version of this CD. Soldier in the Rain is the best song on it (IMHO).
If you ever get the chance to see Dan perform, GO!!!!!!!

Other than the much earlier (and hard to get) "Fables", this is the best of Dan and John's recordings. It feels more like an album than the preceding "Night Are Forever" which sounds like it was thrown together. The first side is flawless; unlike another reviewer here I think "Love is the One Thing We Hide" is a great song, one of the best that Dan wrote. Side two starts out with 3 fairly weak tunes, but somehow they still work, maybe because the last two songs on the side are so strong. Great production and very good musicianship from all the players, especially the drumming of Larry Londin who can never get enough credit as far as I'm concerned.

I'm so glad that this album has finally been released in the U.S. on a CD format. Unfortunately, I'm old enough to remember the 1977 release of the album in vinyl and would actually put this album on to repeat (usually the first side) as I went to bed at night. I had paid big bucks to purchase a Japanese CD of this a few years back, but will probably buy one of these to have around...just in case! Now I can listen to the whole album as I lay me down to sleep!

This is a beautiful album, full of enchanting melodic ballads. I think 'holocaust' is just about the best thing they ever did, with mostly instrumental classical passages and a gorgeous melody. There is the stripped down acoustic ballad 'don't feel that way no more', with just a touch of country. 'Soldier in the rain' is a really ambitious piano ballad, with a progressive middle eight instrumental section. 'It's sad to belong' has a lvely melody and a good set of lyrics. John Ford Coley sings lead vocal on only 'falling stars', but this is also a winner. Every track here is a winner, actually. They are all ballads, except for the first track 'dowdy ferry road', which is really catchy and some nice guitar work. Highly recommended.

England Dan & John Ford Coley's "Dowdy Ferry Road" album originally came out in March of 1977--it's their second in a string of 4 proper albums for Big Tree/ Atlantic Records in the latter half of the '70s, all of which have just been issued on CD on the Wounded Bird label. There are a bunch of compilation CDs out there for England Dan & John Ford Coley--there's Rhino's "The Very Best Of England Dan & John Ford Coley", Atlantic's "The Essentials", plus another one titled "Essentials" on WEA. If you were actually to have bought each of those aforementioned discs, you'd have 6 of the 10 tracks on this album, as well as a lot of overlapping tracks. Now, I have no complaints about Wounded Bird putting out these England Dan & John Ford Coley albums on CD--to my knowledge, the "Dowdy Ferry Road" album had never been released on CD before in its entirety, and of the 4 tracks that don't appear on any of the aforementioned compilations, all of which happen to be Dan Seals solo compositions, there are a couple gems. However, at the current list price of $14.98, with the total running time of the album clocking in at less than 33 minutes, plus with the album being rather uneven in terms of quality, it's not a particularly great value. In a number of instances, Wounded Bird has released two albums together on a single CD, and with this album being so short, it's practically screaming out to be paired up with "Nights Are Forever" or "Some Things Don't Come Easy", and it's unfortunate that this didn't happen. I realize the folks at Wounded Bird need to make money, and they really have made some great music easily available on CD, sometimes for the first time, but even if Wounded Bird had decided to raise the list price a few dollars for a twofer, it would have been a much better bargain that way.

As I said before, there are indeed a number of gems on here. It starts off with Dan Seals' brilliant title track--with its Bo Diddley rhythm on the verses and the surging choruses, it's an absolute hook-fest. Apart from that track, it's pretty much all ballads on here, and the quality varies considerably. The sighing Randy Goodrun composition "It's Sad To Belong", which was a solid hit, is a great, superbly melodic tune, even though Dan Seals himself has made it clear that he never liked the song's fidelity-themed lyrics. Also a sizable hit was John Ford Coley's "Gone Too Far", and although Coley stated in reference to this song that he wasn't trying to write a hit, it certainly sounds like an attempt at another "I'd Really Love To See You Tonight", both with the piano intro and the lyrics, and it's an irresistibly catchy uptempo song in its own right, although it feels a bit rushed through. Coley also wrote the lovely, gentle ballad "Falling Stars". Seals' "Don't Feel The Way No More" is a terrific, moody acoustic ballad--with its lyrics about not dragging out a relationship when the love is gone, it sounds like a response to "It's Sad To Belong".

Unfortunately, some of the tracks aren't up to par. Parker McGee's "Where Do I Go From Here" is a decent tune along the lines of his "I Just Can't Say No To You", but it's weepy and has a dishearteningly cookie-cutter feel; the chorus is nice although it feels kinda throwaway-ish. A couple of Dan Seals' songs are also disappointing--"Love Is The One Thing We Hide" is a sappy ballad with dull cut-and-paste lyrics; and "Holocaust" is a nice attempt at an uplifting album closer and has excellent harmonies, but it suffers from sickly-sweetness. The duo-penned "You Know We Belong Together" is one of those take-it-or-leave-it type of songs--an inoffensive, if forgettable, ballad-ish pop-rocker. And the relatively lengthy "Soldier In The Rain" kinda bites off more than it can chew, although again, it's not a bad track, and it has a really memorable middle-eight.

It's too bad Wounded Bird never bothers with bonus tracks because there's a lovely, waltzing song called "The Time Has Come" which didn't make any of ED & JFC's albums--it turned up as a b-side for "It's Sad To Belong"'s single release and was also used in the film "Joe Panther".

England Dan & John Ford Coley have such a pleasant sound, and there really isn't anything BAD here, but the album just strikes me as overall being too slight, and in the case of the Wounded Bird CD, overpriced--I can't bring myself to rate it higher. You will be rewarded with some gems if you pick this CD up--if you see it used for $6, that's one thing--but for the current list price, it's not a fantastic bargain.