Search - Dillards :: Take Me Along For The Ride

Not Bad, Boys, But Where's The Fizz?

Kevin Cook | McDonough, Georgia USA | 11/28/2001

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I hate to say it, but the latest studio album to date by the Dillards is like a Co-Cola somebody forgot to put the secret ingredient in. It's still pretty good, but something is obviously missing and it don't quite satisfy. You're left hankering for the real thing.It's a Dillards-in-name-only effort. The music is mostly contemporary country, played well by Rodney Dillard and his latest band of anonymous temporary Dillards. One gifted apprentice, Steve Cooley, does earn the right, big time, to call himself a bona fide Dillard. He's just a decade or two too late.Still, ersatz Dillards is better than no Dillards at all, and anything with Rodney's name on it is worth a listen. It will take several playings, but "Take Me Along..." will grow on you. The obligatory Beatles cover, "In My Life," is the least inventive the Dillards have attempted. Rodney's vocal sounds a bit strained, but Cooley's baroque banjo solo is mighty pretty. Rodney is at his best on "Hearts Overflowing," a sweet ballad that finds him in an even sweeter voice, and the self-deprecating "Food on the Table." A fine, underrated country singer, he packs more meaning into one syllable than most Nashville slicks do in a whole career.The real story here is multi-instrumentalist Cooley. He may look like Burl Ives, but Cooley is no avuncular folkie. His scintillating guitar and banjo work on "Against the Grain" and "Banks of the Rouge Bayou," among others, is full of amiable swagger. Cooley also wrote the most traditionally Dillard-ish song on the album. "Wide Wide Dixie Highway" is a barn-burner replete with tasty fiddle, guitar and mandolin breaks. The song almost lives up to the take-no-prisoners pace of the original Dillards in their heyday.Cooley scores again with a chilling electric guitar solo on "The Great Connection," the album's grandiose closer. It's strangely fitting that the last song on the last (so far) Dillards album should sound so much like the Eagles circa "Hotel California." After all, the Eagles suckled at the Dillards' teat, so to speak. Rodney is just returning the, uh, compliment."