Clint Black Album: “Drinkin' Songs & Other Logic”

Description :

Personnel include: Clint Black (vocals, various instruments); Hayden Nicholas (guitar); Jeff Peterson (steel guitar, dobro); Dick Gay (drums). <p>After the crossover effort of 2004's SPEND MY TIME, first-wave new traditionalist Clint Black returns to his roots on 2005's DRINKIN' SONGS & OTHER LOGIC. As the title suggests, this is a barroom-themed album, with a heavy dose of honky tonk that will undoubtedly make purists happy, and will make everyone else want to pop open a cold one. From the barroom boogie of the opening title track to the steel guitar-sweetened "Heartaches" to cry-in-your-beer ballads like "Go It Alone," DRINKIN' SONGS is Black's most solid effort in a long while. <p>At times Black missteps both musically and thematically. "Too Much Rock," for example, with its plodding tempo and its unnecessary and somewhat silly protest message against rock music, feels out of keeping with the album's feel. But those moments are the exception here, and when Black sticks to classic pick-and-twang, as he does admirably on songs like the album's closer, "Longnecks and Rednecks," DRINKIN' SONGS & OTHER LOGIC is well-made and convincing enough to satisfy the country purist in all of us.

This is the best album from Clint Black in a quite a while, although it is not up to the standard of his first albums. It does represent a return to the traditional country music that first brought him into prominance, although there are traces of the Adult Contemporary focus of recent years.

The album opens with the title track, an uptempo song that pays homage to country's past. "Heartaches," the second track, is a nice honky tonk song. After that comes "Code of the West", a rather cliche-ridden number that fails to interest.

These first three songs set the pattern for the CD, two pretty good songs for every one mediocre or indifferent song. I'm not sure which is my favorite track, perhaps the very western swing influenced "I Don't Want To Tell You" with it's great fiddle backing, but clearly "Undercover Cowboy" is the biggest stinker of the set - a song about a cowboy Don Juan whose sole mission is to get "under the covers" with "undercover" cowgirls. Perhaps I am being generous giving this four stars, but the best tracks are very good indeed and the worst tracks (except "Undercover Cowboy") are at least listenable

I am enjoying this CD. It's much closer to his original style, which is what drew me to Clint Black in the first place.

I have heard three songs from the CD. The standout of the CD is Back Home In Heaven . The other two songs I have heard are:Code Of The West, Rainbow In The Rain

You can download these two tracks from Clint's web site: These three songs are all typical Clint Black.

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Clint's remarks on Back Home In Heaven

Clint Black/Hayden Nicholas

Hayden's mother died recently and fortunately we have enough guitar players in the band to cover for him. He was able to spend a lot of the year at home and was there to hold her hand when she passed. I keep lots of songwriting notes and every day we're working in the studio I'm very careful to gather them all up in my notebook and take them with me. I keep them right by the bed because I wake up sometimes and a song will have sorted itself out. So I'm very particular about keeping all those notes with me. I've had the idea for "Back Home In Heaven" for a while, and it was going to be about coming home to my girls, Lisa and Lilly, from being out of town. And I planned to write it alone. For some reason I really can't explain, the scrap of paper with that title on it didn't make it back into my notebook one night. I came into the studio the next morning and Hayden was sitting there holding it. I'm trying to figure out how I could have possibly made a mistake I never make, and he says, "After my mom died your mom sent me a card that said, 'Your angel is in heaven watching over you.'" And we both about lost it. I told him this had to be providence. Something I never do just happened to relate to a note my mom sent him. He turned the line of the song around and it was just perfect. When it came time to record background vocals I wanted to bring in Little Big Town because I love their sound. Before the session, Kimberly's husband died unexpectedly. I called the label and said just mark that off the schedule. We can address it down the road. They called back and said Kimberly had heard the song and wanted to be a part of it-that this song meant a lot to her. It was going to be the first thing they did when she went back to work. So I said, fine, but if at any point they want to cancel -- if they pull up in the driveway and she has second thoughts, cancel it. Well, they showed up and, to be recording anything was remarkable. But with the content of this song it had to be so personal to her. And she lost it several times during the session. I went into clown mode and tried to keep everyone distracted. It turned out to be a really good evening for her. She gave every indication that, even though it was tough, it was what she needed to be doing. They did an incredible job, and just added one more layer of meaning to a song that has plenty.