Not everybody can pick up a guitar, cue up a microphone, and cut a baker’s dozen of songs completely dry with no enhancements or accompaniments and call it a record. Then again, not everyone can write like Chattanooga’s patron saint of country music, Roger Alan Wade. Southbound Train is a reflective album that doesn’t shy away from having a little fun.
Only six months removed from releasing the Saving Country Music Album of the Year called Deguello Motel, Roger Alan Wade is right back at it, just releasing a brand new album that is light years away from the sober and reflective DeGuello, called Too Fat To Fly. Roger made the announcement about the release on Blue Ribbon Radio Episode #50…
As I said in the nominations, all four albums could have won on any given year, and simply by the strength of the 2010 field, they each were unfairly pitted against each other. When all the dust settled, I was still left with two albums that were both masterpieces, both great examples of real country, both accessible and great ambassadors for the independent country movement…
2010 has been a bumper crop year for outstanding REAL/Outlaw/roots/underground/insurgent country to say the least. The result is some projects that may have been serious candidates for Saving Country Music’s Album of the Year in another calendar cycle will not appear, and the requirements must become even more rigorous. For an album to be considered this year, it must be a top-caliber project not just for this year, but for all-time.
On New Year’s Day in 1953, country music’s first superstar Hank Williams died of what could be considered an early-era overdose–heart failure due to a lethal combination of morphine and alcohol. He was the first superstar musician to die in this manner, issuing in an era that would see the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Elvis, and many many more.
Every once in a while an album comes along that you can tell the extra effort was put out to make it right. It’s far beyond just a collection of songs, it unfolds like a story, with all the songs together becoming stronger than the sum of their parts. Its an album that shows patience and wisdom. There’s a grand vision, and more importantly, that vision is realized in the final cut. Deguello Motel is one of those albums.