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Jerry Reed
Live, Still!
R2K Records |
Roger Creager
Live Across Texas
Dualtone |
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By Al Kunz
What are the proper criteria to judge a live album? At the
top of the list should be how well, at least in your imagination,
listening puts you in the club or concert hall. If a live set
doesn't do this it's failed. Still important are the normal concerns
of song selection and performance, but judged differently than
a studio disc. Songs should normally include the obvious hits
plus something fresh, either a new original or a cover the artist
hasn't recorded before. Let's see how country legend Jerry Reed
and Texas-music-up-and-comer Roger Creager stack up against this
criteria as well as each other.
 With just 10
tracks, Reed's disc is a little on the short side. Hopefully
the concert lasted longer. At least the songs selected are the
right ones. Although Reed's first charting single, "Guitar
Man," wasn't a monster hit, it's a logical pick as the source
of Reed's nickname (or maybe the nickname came first, it's a
chicken and egg thing). With Reed's three number one country
singles, "When You're Hot, You're Hot," "Lord,
Mr. Ford," and "She Got The Goldmine (I Got The Shaft),"
along with his two top-ten pop singles ("When You're Hot"
and "Amos Moses") the obvious hits are almost covered.
The addition of the widely known "East Bound and Down"
from the movie Smoky and the Bandit completes the obvious.
"Jerry's Breakdown Revisited," a reworking of "Jerry's
Breakdown" from Reed's Me & Chet album (recorded
with Chet Atkins in the early 70s) and "A Thing Called Love"
(originally on Reed's Nashville Underground disc) completes
the previously recorded material.
Reed covers the "something fresh" angle by writing
two new songs. "A Brand New Me" is an upbeat gospel
song with excellent vocal assistance from The Rufus Green Singers.
The other new song, "Father Time and Gravity," is a
humorous look at growing old. The ravages of time are also one
of the negatives of Live, Still! Reed's voice at some
points show the effects of time while at others the consequences
of age are negligible (the prime example being "Amos Moses"
where Reed's voice is more than up to the task and those tasty
guitar licks remind us of how he earned his nickname ).
Where something fresh is concerned Roger Creager comes up
short in some respects. With just one track that Creager hasn't
recorded before, a cover of Jimmy Buffet's "A Pirate Looks
at Forty," there isn't much here that's new, although Creager's
take (recorded at sound check) shows an introspective side that's
not always apparent in Creager's own songs. With Live Across
Texas also serving as a career retrospective, commonly done
after the third or fourth album, the something fresh angle might
not be as critical in this case.
 With
no chart-toppers, defining Roger Creager's obvious song choices
isn't as straightforward as with Jerry Reed. However, with the
title tracks from Creager's three studio releases and fourteen
of the fifteen songs on Live Across Texas coming from
these same releases it would appear that Creager's song selections
are, if nothing else, at least a good cross section of his catalogue.
But unlike with Jerry Reed the question here isn't how well the
song selections represent the catalogue. Instead we should be
asking how good is the catalogue? The answer is mixed.
In some regards Creager appears, at least from this collection,
to be cut from the same cloth as Pat Green, Kevin Fowler, et
al. There are plenty of party songs that aren't very deep (and,
to be fair, aren't meant to be). They're all fun, which is the
point. Some are clichéd and formulaic ("The Everclear
Song," "Mother's a Redneck, Too," and the worst
offender, what Creager describes as his unofficial theme song,
"Having Fun All Wrong"). But in at least one case Creager
threatens to escape the formula. On the surface "Love"
is nothing but another frat-boy-sing-a-long. But buried in here
is a psychological drama that transcends the obvious.
Love ain't what this songs about
Candle light ain't what I'm in the mood for now
I don't need a metaphor to help me get this out
Love ain't what this songs about
It's about beer and whiskey and drinkin'
It's about playin' the fool and actin' without thinkin'
It's about runnin' with your buddies who don't give a damn
What in the world happens to you man
When Creager's music takes a turn for the serious, for the
most part, he does at least as well as with the party songs while
avoiding the cliché. "I Got the Guns" is a heart-wrencher
about our connections to the past (most prominently his grandfather
who died while Creager was too young to remember him). As downer
songs go "Late Night Case of the Blues" would be hard
to beat. Almost as good as Steve Earle's "My Old Friend
the Blues" (and a song that will take you to the same place
emotionally) this is easily Creager's best song on this set.
The cover of Guy Clark's "L. A. Freeway" that follows
it suffers in comparison. After showing his ability to handle
complex emotional material with "Late Night Case of the
Blues" Creager rocks up "L. A. Freeway" just a
touch and in the process kills the bittersweet emotion at the
heart of the song.
An artist will often introduce songs at a concert with a story
or comment. Some, like Fred Eaglesmith and Bruce Springsteen,
elevate this to an art while Bob Dylan rarely bothers. Including
some of these stories on a live disc, as both Reed and Creager
have done, helps duplicate the concert experience. At times the
song-to-song segues on Reed's disc remind you that you aren't
actually there. The most grievous example is the beginning of
the first track that obviously starts mid-story (maybe we just
got there late) but editing from track to track sometimes drives
home the fact that we're not hearing everything. Despite some
rough spots Reed's song introductions still add to the experience,
most notably his setups for "Lord Mr. Ford" and "Amos
Moses."
Creager's disc flows more naturally from song to song in spite
of being pieced together from four performances (Reed's is from
a single concert). The closing track, "The Mucky Duck Outtakes,"
isn't a song, but interaction with the audience and stories.
One of these stories explains why even someone from Atlanta,
Georgia is a Yankee. The story is funny. Creager doesn't come
across as mean spirited when he tells it and the liner notes
make a point of letting us know it was a joke. However this mindset
along with the Tex-centric content of much of his material limits
Creager's appeal. If he's happy as just one of the current Texas-frat-boy
favorites don't change a thing (lots of people make a decent
living and rarely leave Texas). But significant inroads with
audiences north of the Red River require one of two approaches.
Emulate Tim McGraw (as Pat Green has done) or, the better choice,
put less emphasis on his "Texas-ness" (without totally
abandoning it) while playing to his strengths.
No career advice for Jerry Reed. Fans of Reed need a copy
of Live, Still! whether to complete their collection or
as an excellent retrospective of his career.
www.rogercreager.com for Roger Creager and www.r2krecords.com
for Jerry Reed is the place to go for more.
Contact Al Kunz at kunz-at-rockzilla.net
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