Audie Blaylock & Redline – Hard Country (CD Review)

Audie
Blaylock & Redline – Hard
Country
 Hard Country

1. Real
Hard Way to Lose 3:01 2.) The Chair 2:48 3.)
Home is Where the Heart Is 4:35 4.) A Natural Thing 3:11 5.)
Philadelphia Lawyer 6.) 14 Days 3:56 7.) Stormy Horizons 3:14 8.)
On the Road 2:30 9.) A Grandmother’s Love 10.) Newton’s Grove
2:23
Leaning back,
enjoying a nice sunny Florida afternoon, I adjusted my headphones and
clicked the play button. All of a sudden, a jolt rushed through my
body that shot my eyes from their sockets, made my hair stand
straight up, and knocked my ass off the chair.
Just
about the same time the fiddle churned into a
Real
Good Way to Lose

is when the ash of my burnt flesh began to fall. I crawled back into
my chair and as I looked down at the armrests, I realized I was now a
long way from home.
The
Chair

began to play, this was no ordinary seat it was an old wooden rocking
chair. My glass of soda had become a jar of moonshine. I lifted up
the fringes that used to be my eyelashes and could see deep into the
heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Home
is Where the Heart Is

started and it was slow ballad that one would expect being so far
from my nice porch. I figured I might as well spit the cigarette out
of my mouth, replace it with a piece of straw, pick up a banjo, and
like some folk may say “If you can’t beat em’, join em’.”
A
Natural Thing

is so far the biggest hit of the album. This song opens up with some
amazing fiddling. Patrick Mcavinue is simply amazing. Any person who
has any appreciation for the musical arts would be simply amazed by
his work in this song and on this album. It is a “love song” that
keeps asking the rhetorical question of Ain’t it strange how love
changes you?’ and leaves you with another rhetorical question.
You’ll have to listen to it figure that one out.

Philadelphia
Lawyer
is
the first song that I have noticed to be a true ballad. Listening
closely to it, will make you laugh at the storyline’s meaning.
The
album begins winding down with
14
Days.
It
starts the songs that bring the listener out on the journeys of life.
This feeling is continued though
Stormy
Horizons
and
On the Road.
The
first of the two gave me the picture of being out on a prairie;
sitting on the first of a line of horse-drawn wagons with enormous
storm-clouds ahead and the things that had to be left behind, only
with me in the heart. On the Road is an ode to truck drivers the
world over.
A
Grandmother’s Love
has
lyrics that are probably true to each and every one of us. I know
they were for me. Just listening to the lyrics had me picturing and
almost tearing up at the thoughts the words drove home.
The
last song on the album is
Newton’s
Grove.

This song is an instrumental that brings out the bass, the fiddle,
banjo, and I believe the mandolin. It is a nice ending reflecting the
talents of these master’s skills.
While
this is not my style of music, I can certainly appreciate how skilled
each of the musicians is. It is Bluegrass/Country or whichever genre
you would like to fit it. I would say to anyone reading this give the
entire album a listen to before discounting it.

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