Customer Reviews

Western Beat

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Kevin Welch has won my heart! His music is very deeply satisfying. Every track has the listener wanting more. Very spiritualized messages come through these songs...about love, life, longing, and living in the moment. My favorites are Early Summer Rain, The Other Side, I Look for You and Same Old Rain. His songs demonstrate his strength as a unique and talented musician/lyricist. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED!

In Europe there's an advertisment in cinemas for the danish beer "Tuborg". The music within the spot is played by Kevin Welch - the song is know under the title "Something 'Bout You". I myself was so impressed by this song that I really wanted to get the CD "Western Beat" that "Tuborg" told me. But nowhere in Europe - not in Germany, not in the UK, not in France - there was the possibility to get this old album. So I tried to order it on Amazon.com. And now it's mine - not only the wonderful "Something 'Bout You" (this great, melodious and romantic country-song), but also a whole collection of interesting, creative and nice-to-hear country-songs of Kevin Welch. I must thank Amazon.com for this album. It was a real adventure to get it.

is what I said of Kevin's Life Down Here on Earth CD, but it applies to all his music. The richness of his voice, the wisdom of his lyrics, and the grace and power of his music are simply awesome. He will move you, touch you, and make you feel all the poignancy and beauty and pain of life down here on earth, with an Oklahoma accent and a soul that soars free. Try him, try him, try him. You'll thank me.

Great tunes + Great performance + Great stories = an Outstanding Album. Nice blend of up tempo and slower songs. My favorite is "The Mother Road", a song about 'Route 66' during the depression. Don't miss "A Letter To Dustin" either.

He might've been Jackson Browne, except that Kevin Welch was an Okie. And well, he was very enamored with the literary nature of songs told with a certain Steinbeckian sense of detail and gravitas. And if his romance leans a bit to Kerouac's Buddhist Valentines, there's a plain-spoken beauty to a line like "I've whiskeyed up my coffee cup/ And I'm tryin' really hard not to call you up..." that enflames one's imagination from the haunted "Something 'Bout You."
In Welch's hands, it is the small moments that catch your breath. With a voice that's part cracked Spanish leather, more much-worn body-grazing flannel, the man who is part rogue, part romantic, part stoic, part Dust Bowl refugee sounds like someone you could know... and someone who understands life on its own terms, whether it's the up and down and up fortunes of "Sam's Towns" or the evolution of joy in the face of the getting by "Happy Ever After (Comes One Day At A Time)."
With Mike Henderson, who rides that low 6th string like a hard charger -- making the twang tang -- and the never tilt-a-whirl or miss-a-beat of drummer Harry Stinson and the always elegant bassist Glen Whorf, Kevin Welch made plain sirt arrangements feel like populist jazz. With a prayer-like meditation on the passage of life on John Hiatt's elegant "Train To Birmingham" as a focal point and a swaggering romp through Joe Ely's "Me & Billy The Kid" coming on the heels of Welch's own surging "The Restless Kind," WESTERN BEAT illustrates the tenderness farflung men can embrace, even as they cling to the machismo revelry that makes the girls' knees buckle.
"I Look for You" with its seeking, "Early Summer Rain" with its promise of renewal and the rest show a songwriter/artist i full possesion of their voice, their sound, the songs... Like the O'Kanes, who were contemporaries and whose Kieran Kane would partner with Welch on Dead Reckoning Records and several collaborations, this was the moment that what Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakam and kd lang had started had the potential to become something akin to the burnished acoustic axis of James Taylor/Browne/JD Souther.
Though it never took root, it left some fine music in its wake. This, like his self-titled debut, offer a tremendous witness to what is possible

Some great tunes rendered very well. Good musicians all around. Particularly good - Somethin' About You. Easily his best before or since. Strong buy recommendation.

My wife and I argue about whether this is country, folk or rock, but it's actually residing in some incredible territory between them all. This guy evokes more feeling in one song than most of the Nashville crooners do in an entire career. One of the greatest albums I've heard since I gave up mainline rock and roll many years ago. Find the one you love and dance on the back porch. This music will give you hope.

If you haven't heard of Kevin Welch, you're missing something special. I first encounter Kevin on AUSTIN CITY LIMITS a few years ago. Within minutes, I was captured by his stage presence and delivery. By the time he closed his set with Joe Ely singing "Me and Billy the Kid", I was hooked. I bought "Western Beat" a few days later and was impressed. Welch is a strong songwriter with excellent melodies and insightful lyrics. Even coy ditties like "Hello I'm Gone" work quite well. And he is a fine singer who provides subtle voicings and delivery. The band supporting here knows when to be subtle and when to rock. But see him in concert. Welch has a warm delivery and is unusually magnetic and powerful. Here's a guy just outside the country mainstream who is worth more than any of the 5 "hats" who currently populate the country charts.

This is one of the best county albums ever made, in my opinion. And I'm not a big fan of any of his other albums, but this one time he sure got it right.

I used to see Kevin play in Nashville 20 years ago. He has endured and developed his own unique style. This albumn in an excellent example of his work. Something to play for your friends who say they don't like country music. Listen carefully to I Look for You and Me and Billy the Kid. A must have.