Country

DAYLON WEAR

PRODUCER: Ben Ewing
Envoydiscs
Listen to samples of songs from this album

Daylon Wear is a Texas singer/songwriter now working in Nashville and beginning to make a name for himself with original takes on the eternal verities of country music. Wear kicks off the album with "When The Whiskey Walks In," a new look at country's ever-dependable drinking-song topic. "You walked out, the whiskey walked in," he sings, and it just gets sadder and sadder from there. Wear wrote or co-wrote all 12 songs here, and his co-writers are some of Music Row's best: Bill LaBounty, Mark D. Sanders, Tony Mullins, John Jarrard, Steve Seskin, Bob DiPiero, Debi Cochran and Bob Regan. Songs such as "Tornado Alley" convincingly evoke the sense of time and place of the rural Southwest. "Fast Enough" is a tale of small-town desperadoes-with a rocking beat. "Movin' My Heart Around" is a country-R&B fusion that conjures up the demons of loneliness. "I Got The Time" is the kind of evocative double-entendre country weeper that George Jones used to record. Wear has a husky, slightly worn voice that is perfectly suited to these songs' musical moods. If Springsteen had grown up in central Texas, he might have sounded much like this progressive writer-singer who manages to span country's present and past. Contact: 615-782-0101
--Chet Flippo

CROSSCUT

PRODUCERS: Paul Osborn and Jimmy Rogers
CSP Records
Listen to samples of songs from this album

Crosscut is a thriving throwback to a whole generation of Texas roadhouse bands that featured a flamboyant lead singer, a rock-hard rhythm section, a flashy lead guitarist, a righteous horn section and wailing female backup singers. They would always do a little Otis Redding, a little Sam Cooke, even a bit of Fats Domino, plus some rocking band originals and some sultry numbers to get the crowd slow-dancing. Crosscut's still doing it and playing the absolute hell out of it. In this case, big-voiced lead singer Jerry Sartain is also the flashy lead guitarist-he plays in the classic T-Bone Walker style-and he writes a mean ballad with "This Heart Of Mine." This Dallas-area ensemble is also joined here by Cajun rockers Wayne Toups and Van Broussard for an hour's worth of wide-open, raging roadhouse rock, tinged with edges of R&B, soul, funk, Southern rock, country, blues and Zydeco. The set winds up with a tasteful, let's-tear-the-house-down version of Elmore James' "Dust My Broom." You can almost feel the sawdust on the wooden floor, smell the sweat and taste the ice-cold beer that would go with a powerhouse set like this. Distributed by Gonzales Music Wholesale (800-489-2133); label contact: 972-285-9881.
--Chet Flippo