Jennifer Fitts
Pleasant Detour
Rio Grande Records


by William Michael Smith

Houston's Jennifer Fitts is quickly earning a reputation among followers of the Texas music scene, particularly in the Houston area, and her first seven song EP release Pleasant Detour certainly won't do anything to tarnish it. Produced by Clay Blaker, the album has a solid Texas country feel, well written material, and outstanding players.

Unlike many first CD efforts, Pleasant Detour sounds professional and slick, and why shouldn't it with the likes of Tommy Dettamore and the rest of Blaker's band doing the picking and drumming. Combine these frontline Texas players and Blaker's production expertise with Fitts' fine voice and her honky tonk vein songs and the recording turns out to be a very pleasant Texas musical detour.

Fitts wrote all the songs on the album and for a first-timer they are catchy and serviceable. She works with the traditional subjects of honky tonk music, but she is subtler than many newcomers in her construction and phrasing. Fitts' voice will remind some of Kelly Willis and that is a fairly accurate comparison, although Fitts isn't as laid back as Willis usually is. Fitts took voice classes as part of her drama degree and her training is obvious in her tone, phrasing and control. She has a bright, pleasant voice with just the right country inflection for the material she works with on Pleasant Detour.

The title track is a sweet-memory reminiscence of an affair between two people who were not suited for each other for the long term, but who caught a spark and let it burn bright while it lasted. Dettamore's twanging electric guitar on this driving up-tempo track epitomizes the guitar attack we associate with the new Texas music.

You and I were never meant to travel the same road
I'd led a life of ease and you'd had to tote a heavy load
You were much more suited for the vagabond life
Not the type to have a picket fence, a family or a wife

I know we can't get the old days back
Some people say you made me get off track
I don't have one regret 'cause I know your love was pure
And I'd like to think of you as a pleasant detour
A very pleasant detour

Things aren't happy at home on "Southern Comfort," as Fitts struggles to understand what is going wrong and those cheating impulses start to rise. This track is hardcore Texas style honky tonk jukebox music.

You go out with your friends each night
And you tie one on
I sit at home alone with my wine
And wonder what went wrong

I'm lookin' for some southern comfort
And I'm not talkin' about whiskey
'Cause when you get down to the bottom of the glass
All you feel is empty

Dettamore goes twanging again on "It Was Only the Wine" accompanied by David Lee Garza on accordion and the interplay between the two instrumentalists is primo stuff. Garza gives the tune a South Texas border flavor.

They say when you start drinkin'
That's when you'll tell the truth
Well I must be the opposite
'Cause I'm over you
If you can't see how happy I am
Then you must be blind
That wasn't me talkin'
It was only the wine

"Just Like A Country Song," a semi-true song about a guitar player who goes to prison for shooting a man even though he claimed self-defense at his trial, is the best lyric on the album and very much the type of lyric that fans of the new Texas music prefer. Fitts explained that the song was written for local Houston blues musician Jimmy Deen.

"The first time he saw me playing country music and singing my originals -- I started out fronting a blues band -- he thought it was pretty cool. He came up to me and said 'You sound great singing country. The crowd loves it. I think you should keep on writing originals.' Then he said kind of as an afterthought, 'You know, Jennifer, I play country music, too. I did time with Merle Haggard's guitar player.' When someone tells you something like that, there is a song in there somewhere. I consider this song my version of his story. When I finished writing it, I went and found him at a club and made him come outside on the patio and listen to it to see if I had my facts straight. I did and he cried."

He did time with Merle Haggard's guitar player
They played music just to pass the time
He said, "I always thought I'd be a rock star
But country music kept me from losing my mind"
He said, "I don't stir up trouble like I used to
Lately I just try to get along
I used to play Hendrix in the old days
But my life's turned out just like a country song

The track from the album that is currently getting radio play for Ms. Fitts is her tongue-in-cheek, Conway-and-Loretta style duet with Cory Morrow, "It Feels Like You're Still Here." While it is no poetic masterwork, it has the kind of play-on-words, two-people-in-misery hook that radio audiences have always seemed to love.

Now I realize I may have done a few things wrong
I really should have called you 'fore I stayed out all night long
From now on when they tell me that it's last call at 2
I'll jump right in my truck and I'll come driving home to you
I'm so miserable it feels like you're still here

Fitts, a frequent contributor and now a semi-regular hostess at Blanco's Wednesday open mike nights, is just getting started in her country music career. Doing solo gigs only until recently, she's put together a band and is playing regularly around Houston and supporting her record at venues such as T-Bone Tom's in Kemah, The Prairie Rose Saloon in Tomball, and The Firehouse Saloon. With the talent she's shown on her first release and airplay from radio stations like KIKK and other stations that are supporting Texas artists, we will certainly be hearing more from Ms. Fitts around Houston and, if a break falls her way, in wider circles.

* Detour over to www.jenniferfitts.com and listen to clips of Pleasant Detour. Her record will be available in stores August 22.




Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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