Customer Reviews

More Songs About Building & Cows

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I'd just moved to Kansas City from Boston, MA. New in town, I decided to go out and have a few beers. I wandered into a place called Davies Uptown Ramblers Club and started to kick back a few Old Style's. That night, two bands would take the stage and change the course of my life forever: The Meat Purveyors and Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys.

Up until that moment, I'd thought that country music was all about big hair, perfect teeth and Ronnie Milsap's absurdly oversized, reflective Ferrari sunglasses. TMP and Rex Hobart changed all that for me.

The Meat Purveyors simply tore the club up with their blistering, red headed step child brand of blue grass. Their first release, Sweet in the Pants, captured this energy and remains one of my favorite CDs ever. Their new release, More Songs about Buildings and Cows, surpasses it. If you aren't compelled to tap your toes and sing along, you probably need medical attention.

The musicianship is technically perfect. Pete Stiles has to be the Yngwie Malmstein of the Mandolin. Cherilyn Dimond plays the meanest bass fiddle I've heard, fast and furious. Bill Anderson is a great guitarist and great songwriter.

The Amazon review stated that Jo Walston's voice was a little thin. I would disagree... while she doesn't have a perfect signing voice, her voice is perfectly suited for the band she's in. Along with Cherilyn Dimond's backing vocals, it gives me the feeling that I'm actually in one of those Texas Honky Tonks that I'd love to visit but am way too scared to ever enter. But hey, sitting alone in my living room, listening to the Meat Purveyors as I work my way through a 12 pack of PBR is the next best thing!

My only complaint is that, now that I'm in Denver, I never get to see them live. I just want them to know that they're welcome to crash at my place if that would help them play a few gigs out this way.

Slammin' fiddles and mandolins and guitars that just cut to the quick, and I do mean quick, of some funky bluegrass playin' and pickin'. These folks may be a bit quirky (afterall they fomented in that hotbed of music, Austin, Texas) but they are solid. The rapid-fire interplay sure says that this may not be traditional bluegrass but it is cut from the same cloth---just updated a bit.

Put this CD in your car player when you are getting weary from the road and it will work better than a mug of joe to get you revved up!

Austin, Texas has always nurtured talent with a keen edge to it, and the Meat Purveyors last disc is a testament to just how twistedly brilliant the band is. (Perhaps was, they claimed that their New Year's Eve gig would be their last.) I didn't even like bluegrass music before I heard these guys. They're more than likely to make a fan out of anyone who can appreciate Pete Stiles furious mandolin playing and Jo Walston's hand on her hip and couldn't care less delivery.

I first encountered the Meat Purveyors through the song "Thinking About Drinking" (from the album All Relationships Are Doomed To Fail), yet decided to explore them first through this album, not able to pass up a bluegrass album with a Talking Heads reference in the title. I was surprised to find that, by my standards (at least), the Meat Purveyors are very much rooted in traditional bluegrass. Some purists might object to some of the stuff here, but the hauting "Travel & Toil" and "Morning After" show a real mastery of the genre. Not that they'll let themselves be forced into a corner; their cover of "We Kill Evil," a punk tune which sounds, in the Meat Purveyor's talented hands, as much a gospel number as left-wing manifesto, ends the album on a delighfully surreal note. Not every song works, but there is a lot to like here.