Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash<\/a>, Mark Stuart injected a shot of traditional country into the broad biceps of what was confusingly called "alt-county." Now, with his songwriting chops and reedy baritone intact, he's written a new chapter under the title "Mark Stuart and the Bastard Sons."<\/p>\n"Always been a restless, ramblin' man \/ Never stayed long in any town \/ Never could hold a good job down \/ Always been a restless, ramblin' man." Stuart's one of the few artists who can deliver lines like that with neither irony nor slick Nashville nausea. He does perform over 200 shows a year, after all, and so can claim to actually be a ramblin' man.<\/p>\n
That schedule probably helps account for how easy he makes it all sound on this record, from the rockers ("When Love Comes A-Callin'", "Power of a Woman") to a love ballad like "Lonestar, Lovestruck, Blues," where he sings: "Now that I've found what I was looking for \/ I never had so much to lose." Even when the rambler man comes home, he's attuned to the possibility of loss.<\/p>\n
The straightforward minor-key "Gone Like a Raven" is one of my favorite tracks, with its sad-eyed advice. Then Stuart and his ace musicians blast away those blues with a rockabilly beat in "Seven Miles to Memphis." In the infectious rocker "Fireflies" he couches an indictment of big-box commercialism and hyper-connectedness in joyful rock chords:<\/p>\n
The little guy he can't make it any more
Starbucks and Wal-Mart don't give a fuck about you and us
Gettin' screwed ain't nothing new
Bet your ass it's happening to you…
Fireflies and corn liquor
Gonna have a little fun tonight
Find myself a hard-luck woman
Go dancin' 'neath the pale moonlight<\/p>\n
Then everything goes slidy and sloshy in "Everything's Goin' My Way," and the good times are back in unadulterated form.<\/p>\n
There's no filler here; it's all good, heartfelt stuff with a handful of great hooks sprinkled in, smartly played by an all-pro but understated band that includes fiddlin', mandolinin', and the cracklin' Lars Albrecht on guitar. Mark Stuart's new chapter is a satisfying summer read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark Stuart makes it sound easy, with or without the Man in Black.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions\/670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}