Search - Mac Davis :: Will Write Songs for Food

Mac's final CD?

Randall L. Trautwein | lavalette, wv USA | 03/12/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Sadly, this CD, released in 1994, quite probably may be the final CD of new material ever released by Mac Davis on a major label, as its sales were limited, and, to my knowledge, there have been no further releases since then. That's a shame, because while the CD itself isn't Mac's best effort, I miss not having new Mac Davis recordings to listen to every now and then.

The best of the new tunes on this CD is "Everyone But Me And You," a duet by Mac and Dolly Parton.

Most of the other highlights on the CD are re-recordings of some of Mac's early, and better material: "In The Ghetto" (in which events now take place on an "American morn" rather than specifically in Chicago), "Texas In My Rear View Mirror" (one of my favorites) and "Watchin' Scotty Grow" (Mac used to joke that his son Scotty, the namesake of the song, thought that Bobby Goldsboro was his daddy, since Goldsboro had the hit recording of the Davis penned song way back in the early 1970s).

As for the new material, as usual Mac recorded some very personal songs. "Back From The Dead" proclaims that, despite what had been rumored, he is still alive.

After "It Only Hurts When I'm Awake," with Mac singing of an unamed lost love, the CD then has "If She Hadn't Broken My Heart", which is obviously a song about how his former wife, Sarah, broke his heart when she left him. He sings of a "teenage queen" who later left him and taunted him in tabloids with "The Cadillac Cowboy from hell," referring to Glen Campbell, a former friend who later married Sarah.

Probably the best of the new songs is the final one on the CD, "Brand New Lease On Life," proclaiming his re-birth and how much better it is to wake up with little kids at play itstead of simply "coming to". Mac sings of how Scotty grew up to be a fine young man in spite of Mac and that now Scotty is "watching Daddy grow these days." He concludes by singing that he thanks God for his kids and his sweet wife and that it looks like he has a "brand new lease on life.""