Wingate Records

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This is an album that lives up to its name through pure attitude and enthusiasm. Both the album’s name and its sound bring to mind a cure for the homebound blues that’s hard to resist. A celebration of country’s rich honky-tonk tradition, this is music that sounds best when played loud. There are those that say trad country is long dead. On the evidence here, don’t you believe it! Initially recognised as a gifted sideman, the former drummer from Beaumont, Texas, steps into the limelight as a powerful, impacting lead vocalist. There is a certain style of male voice that just oozes angst. Think George Jones, Ronnie Dunn or Joe Diffie. The songs are great—but, oh ... the questioning pain! George Dearborne has forged a richly varied and substantial career, and he’s done it in the way so many of the great Lone Star musical mavericks have done—striving for greatness by resolutely remaining himself. In the late 1970s he sat behind the drums in various Texas country bands. A dozen years later he was fronting his own band, regularly playing at the legendary Cutter’s Dance Hall in Beaumont, alongside Mark Chesnutt and Tracy Byrd. After a hiatus, he returned to music a few years back to form George Dearborne and Branded, performing across Texas at all the big honky-tonks including Billy Bob’s, Longhorn Saloon and Mo’s Place.

The follow-up to his OLD BROWN BOTTLE debut album, this 15-song collection is a treasure trove that illustrates George’s way with a song. Nothing but a good time party on a platter, he knows the moves and serves them up just right. With the properly righteous vibe powering the proceedings, he has winning ways on display and is sure to serve up a bunch more in the future. Recorded in Nashville with players like Brent Mason, Larry Franklin, Mike Johnson, Shannon Forrest, Glen Worf, Jimmy ‘Moose’ Brown and producer Jimmy Richey, all of whom were at the forefront of the 1990s New Country sounds of Chesnutt, Strait, Byrd, Diffie and Singletary. The result is a sound that exudes the musical chemistry of these jamming compadres, and they manage to bottle the energy of a live performance into this studio recording, to make for one hell of a record. It all plays in so many different country styles, while still maintaining a traditional sensibility, that every track opens up new possibilities. The album brims with bracing, two-steppers like Bar Fly and No Time For The Wine, countered by tear-stained heartbreakers I Put A Smile On This Sad Face and How’s That Working Out For You. 

The title track opener offers a great onomatopoeic groove: The bass struts, the drums step with some flair, and the live-wire lead riff and fiddle hit with the neon energy of a night about to begin, igniting a 1990s firecracker. That enthusiasm never wanes, from the first track to the last, but at the same time, George’s reverence for the genre never falters either. He revives I’ll Break Out Again Tonight, a fuzzed-out explosion of angst from a prisoner dreaming of his loved one on the outside. Probably best-known via Merle Haggard, George transforms the song into a beatific honky-tonk choogle. Along with the song’s engulfing euphoria, there’s a knowing sense of longing and hunger in George’s singing that gives the song extra depth—as if home is the place where you go to lose yourself, and find yourself, too. He moves away from heartbreak and into the topical, including the current political climate, with another revival, this time Merle Haggard’s anthemic Fightin’ Side Of Me. It’s the rousing revelry that shines through such songs as Doug Sahm’s Dynamite Woman, the homespun Huggin’ Thin Air, a decidedly determined One More Reason To Love You and the swampy Love Goes On, that keep that jubilation steadfastly intact. It’s not surprising that he sounds so invigorated when paired with the throwback production favoured by Jimmy Ritchey: crusty quintessential honky tonk arrangements, with swelling bass lines, driving fiddle, shaggy drumbeats, soaring steel and twangy lead guitar. What’s not to love!

https://georgedearbornemusic.com

July 2024