Richard Cabesa’s Music Blog

I have absolutely loved Radney Foster’s work going back to his days in the 1980s as part of Foster and Lloyd.  He hasn’t missed a beat as a solo artist either.  The Del Rio, Texas native’s latest release is This World We Live In.  The album’s opener is Drunk On Love and it has the Bob Dylan bluesy sound to it, yet still has the honky tonk sound we’ve come to expect from Foster.  The relation of the power of alcohol and the power of love is interesting.   Very good song, and the line “flying high on a stone cold rush” is awesome. And you gotta love the “been before the porcelain throne” line.  Sarah Buxton singing backup gives it an interesting twist.  Buxton also sings on Sweet and Wild and gives it an added touch.  The song is about the newness of a relationship.  I think everybody likes how new love feels and can relate to this song.  Kindness of Strangers is pure greatness.  The song is a story about a hooker saving a man who has lost it and is at the end of the line.  I find this line, “letting go even though the heartache’s all you trust” to be very powerful.  Foster is such a great song writer, and singing about finding redemption from a hooker, is good stuff.   

Big Idea is a great, upbeat song and is one of the highlights of the album.  This song cracks me up.  The lyrics are Foster at his best.  “Hey darlin’ I wanna make things perfectly clear.  Now if we could put our heads together we could change the world forever”.  haha  How does he come up with this stuff?  To me Half of My Mistakes is clearly the best song on the album.  It’s a ballad about gaining wisdom from your mistakes.  I love the line “half of the good things in my life, came from half of my mistakes.”  Great stuff.  Kim Richey providing background vocals is a nice touch as well.  New Zip Code is so cliche’ but Foster makes it work.  It’s not a highlight of the album by any means, but it’s passable.  It’s actually kinda funny after listening to it a couple of times.

Another ballad is I Won’t Lie To You, with somebody singing background vocals, but I can’t really tell who it is.  I like it though.  The song is about how love can cure all, including the pitfalls of today’s world.  Prove Me Right is currently playing on radio, but really isn’t that great of song, I guess because the opener gives it the feel of a goofy drunk song.  Also, it sounds like a Toby Keith type song, which isn’t really bad, it’s just not Foster.  The song itself is actually about hope in love and believing in it, which is definitely better than how it opens.  I like the song, and it’s a good radio song, but it’s not one of the better songs on the album.  Fools The Dream is right up there with Half of My Mistakes as the best on the album.  The cleverness with which this song is written shows Foster’s greatness as a songwriter.  Most people will be able to relate to this song, as I think almost everybody has been a relationship that you know is destined for failure.  Kim Richey sings backup, which again, is really nice.  One of my favorite lines from any move is “If you want big rewards, then you gotta take big risk” from Summer Catch.  Never Gonna Fly is basically saying the same thing with different words.  The song is co-written by fellow Texas singer/songwriter Jack Ingram, which is definitely a good thing. 

Overall, this album was a bit of a letdown. While it does contain the typical Radney Foster greatness that we’ve come to expect, there are some songs on this collection that make you scratch your head and ask what was he thinking.  It’s a pretty good album, but based on previous Foster albums, I’ve come to expect a lot more.

Rarely is there a time when a star of the Joe Nichols’ magnitude plays a place the size of Cowboy’s Arlington.  But such was the case last Friday night, and as expected, the house was packed.  Nichols came right out of the shoot with Brokenheartsville and continued from there.

Nichols continued playing hit songs, including Size Matters and Cool To Be A Fool.  He also included a song on his most recent CD that has not been released to radio, I’ll Wait For You.  My guess is that this will be the next radio release.  It’s not much of a concert song though, and the audience seemed a bit disinterested.  He followed that up with a dedication to the late Buck Owens.  However, he could have at least sang something we had heard of.  I’m not sure what Buck Owens song that was.  But props to Nichols for mentioning the little known fact that Buck is from Sherman, Texas.

The show picked up a little bit when Nichols broke into some cover songs.  His version of Whiskey River sounded almost as much like Willie Nelson than Willie himself.  A little Hank Jr and David Allan Coe followed.  David Allan Coe music in a Texas honky tonk bar is always a good thing, and a sure bet to get the crowd back into the show.  Once Nichols had his audience back, he kept it the rest of the night.  He followed with The Impossible and What’s A Guy Gotta Do.  The Impossible is really a powerful song and sometimes gets forgotten about when talking about Joe Nichols tunes, but it may be his best to date. 

Bras and panties filled the stage when Nichols performed Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.  This song is good enough as it is, but what a great live song.  I was hoping to hear a couple of cover songs that Nichols has on his new III CD, Should I Go Home Or Should I Go Crazy (Gene Watson) and My Old Friend The Blues (Steve Earle), but he didn’t do them.  That was my only disappointment of the night. 

I found the show entertaining and I felt Nichols was smooth on stage.  However, a colleague felt the show sucked and that he couldn’t keep his audience.  For the most part I have to disagree, even though, he did lose it a little bit in the middle of the show when he steered off from his own music.  But overall, I felt it was money well spent, and will definitely go see him again.