Search - Jack Grace Band :: The Martini Cowboy

CD review.The Jack Grace Band, The Martini Cowboy The Jack Grace Band s last album I Like It Wrong put in some serious overtime on some of the better jukeboxes across the counry. In fact, you could say that it was the party album of the summer of 2004, Suffused in booze and tested live on crowds of drunks in dives all over town, those songs were every smart party animal s alternative to Jimmy Buffett. It may therefore come as some surprise  that the new album by the Jack Grace Band is an attempt to - gasp - make a serious record. I say record because the cd is divided into a distinct side 1 and side 2. A concept album, no less, complete with little instrumental fragments separating the songs, and something of a central, unifying theme. The most surprising thing about it is that it actually works. Tight, focused, thoughtfully conceived, in other words, everything Grace s previous work was NOT. Which ironically was always his saving grace - the band may have been a little loose, the whiskey may have run rivers but you always knew that if you went to see these guys live you would have a good time. While it doesn t look like anybody left the bar for very long to make this album, it s a hundred eighty degrees from what you might expect after hearing the last one. Is it possible that Grace has actually matured? The Martini Cowboy is packed with haunting, gorgeously old fashioned, 1960s style country songs with tasteful electric guitar, soaring pedal steel, piano and a rhythm section that swings like the dickens. You can dance to this stuff more than you can Grace s older stuff. Because ultimately that s why honkytonks exist: where else can you squeeze your cheatin lover against the jukebox and sway to the strains of Merle Haggard? Who happens to be exactly who the first song, the album s title track, evokes. Straight up. When he s on top of his game Jack Grace s songs sound like country classics from 40 or 50 years ago. The cd s second song Broken Man continues in a purist vein, which leads perfectly into the next song, Cry, a sexy bossa beat and groovalicious bass player Daria Grace s bop-bop backing vocals only momentarily distracting from its eerie minor-key drive and bitter lyrics The last song of the A side , What I Drink and Who I Meet at the Track (Is My Business) is completely self-explanatory - it s one of those songs that someone should have written long ago, and that it took this long before someone did is a mystery.  The B side begins with Uncle Luther. By now, the Martini Cowboy has fallen in love. His Uncle Luther is moving back to the shack he hasn t lived in for ten years and the Martini Cowboy has to get out. But that s not what s bugging him. It s that he can t stop thinking about her. Yeah, her, and it scares the hell out of him. The following tune, Verge of Happiness is so George Jones it s not funny, in fact it s scary, right down to the vocals. Nobody ever did desperate, lost love songs better than Jones, anyway, so it makessense. Happy in the Fall continues in the No Show Jones vein  I m happy in the fall, buI don t like the landing, Grace muses ruefully as the band swings behind him. The cd concludes with a real old-timey number called Spike Down, which sounds like an electrified version of some obscure 19th century folk blues. There s not a weak song on this album - which is more impressive than you think. Hell, even Sergeant Pepper had that stupid, phony raga tune that Harrison sang. And Merle Haggard s greatest hits albums all seem to have those horrid pro-Vietnam War ditties he wrote before he woke up and smelled the coffee. So the Martini Cowboy s in pretty good company.