Search - Rosie Flores :: Bandera Highway

A Great Reason to Move to Texas

James Carragher | New York | 07/28/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a collection from Rosie Flores' three albums for Hightone Records. It is harder edged, more varied country than you're likely to find on a dozen CDs. To my taste, the first two cuts are the least interesting, mid-tempo generic country rockers that sound like Rosie's bid to get something, anything, played on the hundreds of Big Country 103, Today's Country pablum stations across the country. She should never have bothered, for it's when she revs up her own musical signatures that Bandera Highway becomes a superb collection. West Texas Plains is a sweet ballad of loneliness in big, empty spaces. Love and Danger, a duet with Joe Ely, describes a couple trying to resurrect the excitement of just being together. It is edgy with longing and a sense of last chance. Bandera Highway is a unsentimental but affectionate return-home-from-the-road-and-leave-again song. Rockabilly and two-step kick in with two of the album's best songs, Honky Tonk Moon and His Rockin' Little Angel, including backing vocals from that eternal bad girl Wanda Jackson. You also get Texas blues in Blues Keep Callin and Butch Hancock's Boxcars. It all winds up with a song that channels the lovely harmonies of old Everly Brothers singles from the late 50s and early 60s, Don't Let Our Love Die. Excellent playing throughout too, including some honky tonk keyboards and plenty of pedal steel.



An oddity -- on my copy of the CD at least, the track listing is out of order for Boxcars and Rockin' Little Angel.



Aside from her considerable vocal and guitar talents, Flores wrote or co-wrote many of the songs here. She's got a distinctive and impressive niche, deserves much wider recognition, and with Bandera Highway shows why."