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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 28, 2021 13:40:33 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001.
13. Junior Brown - Mixed Bag
I'm a big Junior Brown fan. And I'm super glad I got to see him not too long ago. Truth in advertising though, this album is a bit of a mixed bag. Not that it's a bad album. It's perfectly fine. It just isn't anywhere near Junior's best work. But any time I get to listen to that Guit-Steel I'm a happier person.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 29, 2021 9:50:02 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001.
12. The Derailers – Here Come the Derailers
The Derailers are one of the most fun country bands ever. A great honky-tonk band channeling the best of Buck Owens' peak years without being overly derivative. This album, while good, isn't great. It sees a small shift from their normal rollicking bar band sound to a little more of a (then) contemporary sound. Not that it's bad. It has some great tracks including some written by Jim Lauderdale. It's just not peak Derailers.
I do wish that taking the bar exam was this good.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 30, 2021 10:37:02 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001.
11. Raul Malo - Today
First things first, this is not a Mavericks album. Not even The Mavericks after their evolution into a less country entity. This is a Latin Pop/vocal jazz album with Malo's voice front and center. This is very much Malo exploring his Cuban musical roots. There's just a ton of stuff to love here. Malo and Shelby Lynne do a great duet on "Two to Tango." He shows off his vocal chops on "Let's Not Say Goodbye Anymore." And he channels his inner lounge lizard on "Since When." It's not as good as a great Mavericks album. But it's a nice change of pace for Malo.
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Post by tartanphantom on Jun 30, 2021 12:03:04 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001. 11. Raul Malo - TodayFirst things first, this is not a Mavericks album. Not even The Mavericks after their evolution into a less country entity. This is a Latin Pop/vocal jazz album with Malo's voice front and center. This is very much Malo exploring his Cuban musical roots. There's just a ton of stuff to love here. Malo and Shelby Lynne do a great duet on "Two to Tango." He shows off his vocal chops on "Let's Not Say Goodbye Anymore." And he channels his inner lounge lizard on "Since When." It's not as good as a great Mavericks album. But it's a nice change of pace for Malo. No matter what the genre, I love this guy. Incredible voice.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 30, 2021 12:32:06 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001. 11. Raul Malo - TodayFirst things first, this is not a Mavericks album. Not even The Mavericks after their evolution into a less country entity. This is a Latin Pop/vocal jazz album with Malo's voice front and center. This is very much Malo exploring his Cuban musical roots. There's just a ton of stuff to love here. Malo and Shelby Lynne do a great duet on "Two to Tango." He shows off his vocal chops on "Let's Not Say Goodbye Anymore." And he channels his inner lounge lizard on "Since When." It's not as good as a great Mavericks album. But it's a nice change of pace for Malo. No matter what the genre, I love this guy. Incredible voice. Yep. He really does have one of the great voices of current singers.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 1, 2021 9:38:51 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001.
10. Gatemouth Brown - Back to Bogalusa
There was a significant change in Gatemouth's albums that resulted from his move from Alligator to Verve. Alligator is a pure blues label and most of Brown's output there was pure electric blues. Verve grew up as a jazz label and with the move Brown was better able to explore the varied influences on his music.
Not that this isn't still a blues album. It absolutely is. But Brown really looks at the influences of his native Louisiana on this album with some tracks that show the Creole and Cajun influences that went in to the gumbo of Louisiana music. This just adds interest to the usual Gatemouth jump blues and early R&B influences.
At 77, Brown produced his strongest album in twenty years just by playing music that he loved the way he wanted to play it. And at that age...good for him.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 2, 2021 13:15:34 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001.
9. Eleven Hundred Springs - A Straighter Line
I've mentioned the role that streaming services play in introducing me to new music. Contrary to the common lament that "there's no good new music" or "you can't find it because it's not on the radio," there is tons of great new music and it's easier to find by at least an order of magnitude than it ever was before.
Eleven Hundred Springs is one of the many bands I've discovered because of streaming services. They're a great little band from Texas playing legit outlaw country. And back in the days when you were tied to the radio, the record store and maybe a handful of magazines to try to find music, the chances of me finding them would have been somewhere between zero and nil.
This is a solid country album by guys who just play music, drop albums now and then and work to maintain a fan-base. And bless them for that.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 6, 2021 10:23:11 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001.
8. Red Meat – Alameda County Line
Red Meat is another of those under-appreciated California Country bands. They've only released a handful of albums and mostly just spend their time playing around the Bay area. But they're just a quality country band that pays homage to multiple California country influences.
It would seem likely that this is another band that I discovered through a streaming service, but I was actually turned on to them by the late Paul McEnery. So thanks, Paul.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 7, 2021 9:51:17 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001.
7. Robert Cray – Shoulda Been Home
This was the album that made me realize that while Cray was a good bluesman, what he really was was the spiritual successor to the soul of Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett. This album would have been right at home coming out of the Stax studio in 1968. And I mean that in the very best way.
This is by far Cray's strongest album since the mid-80s and the days of "Strong Persuader" and "Bad Influence." A great soul album from start to finish.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 8, 2021 9:32:09 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001.
6. Wayne Hancock - A-Town Blues
The fact that a Wayne Hancock album scores outside my top ten is a testament to how good a year 2001 was for albums. I really love Wayne the Train's retro western swing sound and have found his albums to be almost universally excellent.
I guess if there's a knock on Hancock it's that you absolutely know what you're going to get from his albums. A old-time honky-tonk sound that is straight out of 1950s west Texas. But I'm fine with that because he does it so damn well.
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Post by tartanphantom on Jul 8, 2021 9:37:24 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001. 6. Wayne Hancock - A-Town BluesThe fact that a Wayne Hancock album scores outside my top ten is a testament to how good a year 2001 was for albums. I really love Wayne the Train's retro western swing sound and have found his albums to be almost universally excellent. I guess if there's a knock on Hancock it's that you absolutely know what you're going to get from his albums. A old-time honky-tonk sound that is straight out of 1950s west Texas. But I'm fine with that because he does it so damn well. I concur. To some folks Wayne may be a bit of a one-trick pony, but he does what he does very, very well.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 8, 2021 9:43:32 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001. 6. Wayne Hancock - A-Town BluesThe fact that a Wayne Hancock album scores outside my top ten is a testament to how good a year 2001 was for albums. I really love Wayne the Train's retro western swing sound and have found his albums to be almost universally excellent. I guess if there's a knock on Hancock it's that you absolutely know what you're going to get from his albums. A old-time honky-tonk sound that is straight out of 1950s west Texas. But I'm fine with that because he does it so damn well. I concur. To some folks Wayne may be a bit of a one-trick pony, but he does what he does very, very well. I absolutely agree. He knows his niche, he fills it well and never seems like a poser. Another one of my favorite current bands, The Country Side of Harmonica Sam, is kind of similar. They do retro honky-tonk, but without the western swing emphasis that Wayne has, and they do it very very well. They also dig out a lot of vintage songs that were released by tiny labels and resurrect them to great effect.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 9, 2021 9:56:52 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001.
5. Buddy Guy – Sweet Tea
Sweet Tea is definitely an anomaly in Buddy Guy's discography. This is as pure a blues album as Guy ever made. It may well have been a reaction to ten years of attempting (and failing) to re-create "Damn Right I've Got the Blues" and re-engage the rock audience that bought that album. Guy's career was a roller-coaster of highs and lows and this is one of the highs, following a fairly long dip and proceeding another that would last until 2010's "Living Proof."
I've seen some criticism of the production of this album. And it may be a bit slick for a pure country blues album. And Guy's version of Junior Kimbrough's "I Gotta Try You Girl" is probably self-indulgent. But this is a damn fine album. And the absolutely stellar opener, the acoustic "Done Got Old" (also a Kimbrough song) shows that Guy is a master of every brand of blues.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 12, 2021 15:01:46 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001.
4. The Del McCoury Band - Del and the Boys
I like bluegrass. But I'll also cop to the fact that I get tired of bluegrass pretty quick. So I don't listen to a ton of bluegrass.
This album came out at the same time that McCoury was working with the western swing of the "Down From the Mountain" tour after Ralph Stanley left the tour. So I was introduced to McCoury and this album from that concert. The nice thing about the album is it moves a bit beyond the standard bluegrass fare while still staying very true to the genre. And really there's no doubt that McCoury is the current king of traditional bluegrass (Ralph Stanley is the Emperor).
And while this song has almost unquestionably been overplayed, I have to go with the album opener which is just a stellar version of Richard Thompson's 1952 Vincent Black Lightning.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 13, 2021 10:45:02 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 2001.
3. Merle Haggard - Roots, Vol. 1
What more am I supposed to say about Hagg that I haven't said so many times before? For his second release with indie label Anti Hagg teamed up with long-time Lefty Frizzell guitarist Norman Stephens for what is almost, but not quite, a tribute to Lefty Frizzell.
The album is largely Lefty songs, though there are a few by Hank Williams and Hank Thompson and three new ones by Hagg. Mostly it's a tribute to the music that made Hagg tick and gave rise to his personal style and in that vein it's a worthy companion to his Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills tributes.
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