Dallas Wayne
Here I Am In Dallas
Hightone Records HCD 8137



by William Michael Smith

Choosing to title his new HighTone album Here I Am In Dallas after the last big hit ever recorded by Faron Young says a lot about Dallas Wayne and his approach to country music. With his unmistakable gravelly baritone voice that seems perfectly designed for country music, Wayne could undoubtedly sell himself to the Nashville money machine and be rolling in dough right now, recording gushy duets with Faith Hill, wearing leather pants and designer cowboy duds while the strobe lights flash. But Wayne's been to Nashvegas and, like his super-talented buddy Robbie Fulks, he couldn't play that game. So Wayne lives in the Bay area and does country music his way. He may never get rich, he may never have massive commercial fame but he doesn't have any trouble looking in the mirror either.

It's tough to follow up a critically acclaimed record like Wayne's 2000 HighTone release, Big Thinkin', but Wayne's Here I Am In Dallas shows he's definitely up to the challenge. Wayne is back with a dozen neon anthems that come across immediately as genuine, 100% pure honky tonk music. This certainly won't come as a surprise to Wayne's fans who know this is simply what Dallas Wayne does, that this is Dallas Wayne.

Backed on his latest album by his band, The RoadCases (Chris Montgomery, steel and electric guitar; Dale Daniel; drums; Doug Blumer; lead guitar) with hired guns Brantley Kearns on fiddle and Skip Edwards (Dwight Yoakem) on keyboards, Wayne steers a course straight for the jukebox with twangy, danceable, hardcore honky tonk tunes. Much of Wayne's latest work comes from the Bakersfield tradition, but Wayne is too talented to be limited to a single style. The set includes some barroom tear-jerkers that George Jones would be proud to call his own and some outstanding covers that, like much of the work in Wayne's career, sound like Nashville in the good old days.

While Wayne's instantly recognizable baritone voice is his strength, his songwriting is also top-notch. He knows the forms and he doesn't wander far from them in composing lyrics that are spot-on for jukebox consumption. Wayne wrote seven of the tracks on Here I Am In Dallas and they are all strong efforts. While some of the tracks like "If These Walls Could Talk" have resonances that are specific to earlier country standards and classic voices, Wayne finds some excellent turns of phrase for the sharp hooks in his tunes. He sets the tone for the album with an instantly lovable Haggard-influenced bar anthem, "Bouncin' Beer Cans Off the Jukebox." You have to go back to the glory days of guys like Johnny Paycheck to find boisterous, unrepentant drinking songs like these.

I'm bouncin' beer cans off the jukebox, I'm a poster boy for detox
My aim is getting better every time I hear those songs

"The Stuff Inside" is an entirely different kind of drinking song. It has a vintage George Jones sound, even a few chillingly painful and pathetic spoken lines, and it paints a tragic picture of an alcoholic's thought process. Any country music fan is bound to have heard a lot of drinking songs, but I don't recall any that had this particular vision.

On the shelf behind the counter, it don't look so tough
But unscrew the cap, take a drink, and you can't get enough
When emptied of its poison, it can shatter like your dreams
Dropped into the gutter, just another broken thing

You know, this bag that I keep around my bottle let's me fool myself
The truth is I just don't want to know how much that I've got left
'Cause it hides the truth 'til it's too late just like a lover's lie
And it always leaves you wantin' more of the hidden hell it holds inside

No, the bottle wont' kill you, it's the stuff inside
It's the same with fools like us until the day we die
Unspoken works and broken dreams, anger and foolish pride
No, the bottle wont' kill you, it's the stuff inside

Wayne also excels at hurtin' and cheatin' songs. Again, Wayne proves that he is expert in the forms and the conventions for writing these types of songs and his band proves they know exactly the proper instrumental style and feel to support them. Wayne innately understands the jukebox and his lyrics show him to be a master of the idiom. There are lyric echoes of Willie Nelson's "Hello Walls" on Wayne's "If These Walls Could Cry," but there is not a hint of plagiarism or commercial copycatting in this bouncy, up-tempo two-stepper.

If these walls could cry, they'd never stop
I doubt you'd see their last teardrop
They heard it all from I love you to goodbye
And I'd be drownin' in these tears if these walls could cry

Other Wayne numbers like the drawling Jones-like "She Lit The Torch" are hurtin' songs par excellence. This one could easily trace itself back to Jones's "The Grand Tour," but again there is little more than the similarity of a few words and concepts. Otherwise the song stands entirely on its own merits as a solid honky tonk piece. With lines like "'Cause she lit the torch that I'm still burnin'/Every night her memory fans it from a flicker to a flame," the song is nothing you've never heard before, but it's nothing you've ever heard before either. On songs like these and the weepy "Not A Dry Eye in the House," Wayne just keeps spitting out simple but classic, memorable honky tonk jukebox lines delivered in as pure a honky tonk voice as there is on the scene today in this world of Barbie and Ken country-pop singers.

'I'm Gonna Break Some Promises Tonight" is a cheatin' song that illustrates Wayne's ability to write great hooks and allows The RoadCases and fiddler Brantley Kearns to show off their chops. This is a dance hall twanger right out of the California country school.

I'm gonna be sick, sober and sorry come tomorrow mornin'
But I'm gonna break some promises tonight

Wayne covers five great country songs on the album, including the title cut, that span a broad spectrum of styles. Each has its own particular merit. Wayne and his band have just the right off-kilter, left-of-center attitude to handle Nashville guitar giant Mike Henderson's "Hillbilly Jitters." But the two tracks that really grab me in my country music soul are Wayne's wonderful renditions of the gigantic Vernon Oxford hit "Shadows of My Mind" and the classic tear-jerker "Happy Hour," which was revived and became a minor alternative country hit by street singer Ted Hawkins in the early '90's. Wayne's voice and delivery were made for songs like these and he sings them without a trace of irony or campiness.

Wayne saves the best for last, though. A tongue-in-cheek musician's lament written with former bandmate and producer of Big Thinkin', Robbie Fulks, "I Hit the Road (And the Road Hit Back)" is a stone-classic honky tonk highlife song. Someone explain to me again why this song isn't in the country Top 10.

Well, if I'm ragged 'round the edges, look a little hard
Life ain't easy for this honky tonk star
Spent my soul in a thousand dives
I've been on this highway since '75
Mama begged me to put the guitar down
I should've listened but it's too late now
Left that farm in a beat up Cadillac
I hit the road and the road hit back
(Thought I knew it all, but I didn't know jack)
I hit the road and the road hit back

Produced by Wayne and HighTone's Bruce Bromberg, Here I Am In Dallas is another of those "too-country-for-country-radio" albums that will make you do a slow burn and cuss every time you turn your radio on searching for something with hillbilly soul and plenty of honky tonk authenticity only to find the latest 'N Synch sounding country flashes doing sterile songs supported by canned rock arrangements. Fear not, though, for your smart Americana station will be playing the hell out of Here I Am In Dallas. With lines like these, it's too good and real not to find a home somewhere on the dial.

Damn those boys from Bakersfield,
How'd they know how I feel
I thought I was the master of holdin' it inside
Those boys down there in Tennessee
They never got the best of me
But they never heard ole Buck sing "it's cry-y-y-in' time"

If you like country music the way it used to be and the way it ought to be, buy Here I Am In Dallas. Bein' wrong never felt so right.

*Just how good is Dallas Wayne at this country music thing? Well, he's the featured vocalist on the current Twangbangers tour, a super-group tour where he is being backed by none other than the "Hot Rod Lincoln" guitar giant Bill Kirchen (Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen), Mr. Telewhacker, Redd Voelkaert, who played lead guitar for Merle Haggard the last umpteen years, and Joe Goldmark, one of the premier steel guitarists on the planet. You can buy Here I Am In Dallas and read all about the Twangbangers at www.hightone.com Dallas Wayne and the Twangbangers will be in Houston at the Fabulous Satellite Lounge September 27 and in Dallas at The Gypsy Tea Room September 28. Larry Sloven, president of HighTone, has guaranteed that the 'Bangers will be doing the wildest, longest, insane-est version of "Hot Rod Lincoln" ever heard, along with a selection of songs from Here I Am In Dallas and the recent HighTone albums by the other members of the Twangbangers. For more Twangbanger information, see www.dallaswayne.com




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

 
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