Customer Reviews

Here I Am In Dallas

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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After recording a half-dozen albums in Finland (!), this native Missourian returned to the States and signed with the Hightone label. This second LP for Hightone sticks to the twangy straight-ahead country and honky-tonk sounds that are his stock-in-trade. His previous collaboration with alt.country stalwart Robbie Fulks is slimmed down to one co-write ("I Hit the Road (and the Road Hit Back)"), giving favor to Wayne's own pen, and some well-selected covers (including an oddly cheery take of Ray Frushay's "Cheatin' Traces" - recently covered by The Wandering Eyes).

Wayne's stinging criticism of modern country (most notably in the press materials and liner notes) might grow tiresome if his most effective refutation of mainstream country's "diluted and deluded" state wasn't his music. But from Chris Lawrence's stuttering guitar figures (tipping more than a few strings to Merle Haggard's Strangers) to Wayne's Vern Gosden-like bottom scraping vocals (with a twist of George Jones' multi-note runs), this is heartfelt thowback, rather than calculated nostalgia. The subject matter (drinkin', women, the road, and several stripes of misery) doesn't pave any new ground, but, in large part, that's the point. They're well-worn classics for a reason: listeners can relate. (And no one's complaining about blues tunes using the same old chord progressions, are they?)

Guest players Skip Edwards (piano) and Jay Leach (steel guitar) add weepy backing to "Not a Dry Eye in the House," while Wayne's band (The Roadcases) hold forth as a crack unit (unusual in the mainstream world of studio pickers who don't follow an album out onto the road). A solid outing that, sadly, you won't likely be hearing on a country radio station near you (unless you happen to have an Americana or non-commercial station nearby).

This is not simply Dallas Wayne's best album, it is an awesome cd. From first to last the material is first class and the singing and music is hardcore country that anyone who likes the old greats not the new plastics, will wear out this cd. It really is that good. Buy it & spread the news here is one of the great moments in country music!

Item arrived VERY quickly, still cello-wrapped and just as promised. I am very pleased with this transaction and would buy again from this seller. I bought it
as a gift, so have not unwrapped it.

After listening to Dallas Wayne on XM radio I was curious as to what his
music was like. Well I like. I have since bought another C.D. "I'm Your
Biggest Fan" also a good C.D.

If you didn't listen to what passes for country radio, you'd swear we'd entered a golden age of honkytonk music. Alas, as Dallas Wayne observes in his brief liner notes, mainstream country just gets more "diluted and deluded." So thank Hank's ghost, or whomever, for the likes of Wayne, Roger Wallace, Heather Myles, Justin Trevino, James Hand, Don Walser, Dale Watson, and others who carry the hard-country flag on independent labels. Wayne's last outing, Big Thinkin', his first for Hightone, amounted to a collaboration with Robbie Fulks, who co-produced and wrote or co-wrote all of the songs. The result, a brilliant, edgy exercise, alternated -- or, sometimes, fused -- wit and mockery with despair and violence. The effect, one might say, was too country even for too country. This time Fulks appears only once, as co-composer with Wayne of the last cut. As Wayne takes charge with co-producer Bruce Bromberg, Thinkin's rock inflections largely disappear in favor of more traditional hillbilly-shuffle rhythms and slow heartache melodies. This is honkytonk served straight up, and if you like it that way, you'll like this CD a whole lot. Wayne writes in-the-tradition songs well, and he has a good ear for other people's songs. It's a pleasant surprise to see "Shadows of My Mind," a minor hit for Vernon Oxford in the 1970s (even then it seemed about 25 years behind its time), resurrected, and done justice. "Happy Hour," memorably recorded on a 1980s Rounder album of the same name by the late Ted Hawkins, is another treat. So, come to think of it, is everything else here.