Jamey Johnson - The Guitar Song
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CD Details
Artist: Jamey JohnsonEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2010-09-14
Music Label: Mercury/Nashville
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Lonely At The Top
- Cover Your Eyes
- Poor Man Blues
- Set `Em Up Joe
- Playing The Part
- Baby Don't Cry
- Heaven Bound
- Can't Cash My Checks
- That's How I Don't Love You
- Heartache
- Mental Revenge
- Even The Skies Are Blue
- By The Seat Of Your Pants
- California Riots
- Dog In The Yard
- The Guitar Song (Featuring Bill Anderson)
- That's Why I Write Songs
- Macon
- Thankful For The Rain
- Good Morning Sunrise
- Front Porch Swing Afternoon
- I Remember You
- Good Time Ain't What They Used To Be
- For The Good Times
- My Way To You
Music reviews of The Guitar Song
Music Review: Jamey Johnson hits this one out of the park
Rating: 5 Stars
Fans of traditional country music found a lot to love in Jamey Johnson's "The Guitar Song" (Mercury Records). The September 2010 release, with its 2-CD "Black Album" and "White Album," peaked at number 1 on the Billboard country album chart and currently sits at number 28.
From the first licks of Keith Whitley's "Lonely at the Top," the first cut on "The Black Album," to the final haunting note of Johnson's own "My Way to You," the lower Alabama native proves there's room for everybody in Nashville.
Johnson's been hailed as the second coming of Waylon Jennings and the heir apparent to Merle Haggard. His strong vocals and stylings bear similarities to both men, to be sure, but Johnson doesn't have to stand in anyone's shadow. He is the real deal and I believe every note he sings.
The legendary Bill Anderson co-wrote the title track, "The Guitar Song," about a pawn shop guitar with a hundred stories to tell.
Johnson teams with Bobby Bare Sr. and Wayd Battle in the achingly beautiful waltz "Cover Your Eyes." Johnson's acoustic guitar and "Cowboy" Eddie Long's steel guitar lend just the right amount of lonely to the track.
On "Rich Man Blues," which Johnson wrote, the former Marine talks through the first part of the lyrics, setting the dark mood.
Hank Cochran's "Set `Em Up, Joe" is one of the break-up songs of all time, and Johnson covers it with memories of sawdust and 1951 jukeboxes loaded with "Hank and Lefty and B-24."
Johnson has mastered the art of the send-up song. In his "Playing the Part," a sideways look at Los Angeles, where "promises break like an egg on the hot asphalt," and people resort to "taking depression pills in the Hollywood hills." Longview native Matthew McConaughey directed the video for this cut.
"California Riots," on "The White Album," tells of the singer's arduous journey from his Southern roots to the glitz and glamour of stardom.
Johnson's idea of a love song is the hard driving "Macon," a tune that should be played, with the volume cranked way up, during the final 100 miles of a long road trip.
He had a hit with "Can't Cash My Checks," an everyman tune about making a living and staying out of debt. It's a powerful hymn to the plight of working men and women, especially in this economy.
"That's How I Don't Love You" begins with a wicked bass lick and has a jazzy feel unusual in a break-up song.
"Thankful for the Rain" and "Good Morning Sunrise" should be required listening for anyone in a bar at closing time. They're both great "final call" tunes.
Johnson lets his deep country roots shine on the cover of "For the Good Times." Any doubt about Johnson's musical leanings will be erased with only one listening of the Kris Kristofferson lyrics made famous by Perryville's own Ray Price.
"Heartache" is more of a threat than a song.
Johnson stays on the dark side with a rich, layered cover of Mel Tillis' "Mental Revenge." It's obvious Johnson's heart has been stomped on and he's plotted some pretty serious paybacks. You can't sing songs like this without having been there.
"Even the Skies are Blue" is perhaps the best example of what Johnson can do with a pen and a piece of paper.
Johnson takes his fans to the Delta with "By the Seat of Your Pants," a teaching song about lessons learned the hard way, and he celebrates country living on "Front Porch Swing Afternoon."
"Lonely at the Top" and "That's Why I Write Songs" are autobiographical tunes that explain why Johnson does what he does.
"The Guitar Song" is not all honky tonks, bad guys and the blues, however. When he turns his hand to a gentle ballad like "Heaven Bound," Johnson can melt a heart of stone.
He turns tender and sentimental in the lullaby "Baby Don't Cry" - and he makes it work.
In the era of slickly produced records, dime-a-dozen lyrics and overwrought performances, Johnson's laid back, pared down approach to the music is a breath of clean, rare, fresh country air.
Description of The Guitar Song
The Guitar Song. is a 25-song, double album with thematically linked sets of songs dubbed the "Black Album" and the "White Album.""The original idea was always to do a double album," says Jamey. "The album is a tale. The first part of it is a very dark and sordid story. Everything after that is progressively more positive, reassuring and redemptive."
The "Black" songs include the menacing, "Poor Man Blues," the defiant "Can't Cash My Checks," the sighing and bluesy "Even the Skies Are Blue" and the chilling "Heartache." The lighter, "White" songs are highlighted by the strongly autobiographical "That's Why I Write Songs," the languid "Front Porch Swing Afternoon," the rocking "Good Times Ain't What They Used to Be" and the easy-going groove tune "Macon."
The ambitious project's textures are many and varied. "Baby Don't Cry" is a lullaby. "I Remember You" is a gospel song. "That's How I Don't Love You" is a deeply sad power ballad. "By the Seat of Your Pants" tells of life's lessons. The title tune, "The Guitar Song," is told from the point of view of two forgotten guitars hanging on a pawn shop wall. "Playing the Part" and "California Riots" come from feeling out of place as a country boy in Hollywood.
As a lover of classic country sounds, he regularly performs oldies in his stage shows. The Guitar Song contains "For the Good Times,", "Set `Em Up Joe" and "Mental Revenge". "Lonely at the Top" is an undiscovered Keith Whitley song.
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