-
-
- LONESTAR
- LET’S BE US AGAIN
The most definitive studio CD yet from a band already possessing
some of latter-day country music's biggest hits is titled with
obvious understatement.
Its content, Lonestar guitarist Michael Britt notes, is "more us"
than ever.
Indeed. Lonestar--lead singer and principal songwriter Richie
McDonald, guitarist Britt, keyboardist and group founder Dean Sams
and drummer Keech Rainwater--wrote or co-wrote all but one of the
13 tracks of Let's Be Us Again. Additionally, the band produced
the song “Somebody’s Someone,” which McDonald wrote.
"I think we finally have a grasp of what we want to say and how we
want to say it," Dean Sams reflects. "Richie has always been one
of the keys to our success -- with his voice, and pen, and
although with this record it wasn't a conscious effort for us to
write everything, it's pretty cool that all but one of the songs
was written or co-written by members of the band. I think it shows
strength, unity and growth."
Strength and unity aren't always the first traits seen in bands,
especially those who have enjoyed the success that Lonestar has
had. After years together, nearly a decade in Lonestar’s case,
egos can collide amid the pressures of widening recognition and
hard work. Artistic growth tends to be even more rare than
longevity. Yet with Lonestar the success and growth have been
consistent and prevalent throughout, as the band continues to
challenge itself. This passion and determination is evident on
their new recording, Let's Be Us Again.
Here the band continues to illustrate its penchant for noticing
taken-for-granted moments of everyday life, slamming them with
such vocal and instrumental power that the result is transformed
from the everyday to classic. That understanding of everyday life,
the backbone of country music, has enabled the band to record
their most riveting, consistent album to date.
The performance opens in rowdy innocence with a verbal video of an
American phenomenon, "County Fair." Surging music and
kaleidoscopic lyrics profile the backdrop of a small town summer:
hot buttered corn on the cob, giddy rides on the ferris wheel and
the tilt-a-whirl, barked come-ons from hard-eyed carnies hawking
rigged games and three-eyed goats and a provincial glory summed up
in eight words of the chorus: "Big time, big top, big crowds, big
hair."
Several songs in the same uptempo, down-to-earth vein follow,
including "Class Reunion (That Used To Be Us)," a rite of passage
brightened by wonderment at not just what the passing years have
wrought, but at what those still to come will bring. "Summertime,"
is a celebration of the season in which masculine attention finds
itself focused on bare skin and “Women Rule The World,” another
Sams co-write, speaks to who’s really running the show, women.
"Mr. Mom" is a rueful revision of the perception that housework
and caring for children is easy.
This band has used soaring, passionate vocals to launch such huge
hits as "Amazed," "My Front Porch Looking In" (the most-played
country song of 2003) and "I'm Already There," a special favorite
of the military and their families and BMI/ASCAP Song Of The Year
for 2002. The group has found its emotional essence powered by the
national post-9/11 appetite for songs that come from and target
the heart.
Let's Be Us Again pays homage to that tradition with a repentant
title track that offers an emotional plea for the healing of a
troubled relationship. "Let Them Be Little," concerns the
all-too-fleeting time when kids are small, and McDonald says part
of the song's genesis was a note that his son brought home from
kindergarten. Still hanging on the family refrigerator and colored
blue, it reads: "Dear Parents--My arms are short, and my legs are
short, so please have patience with me, because I'm a little
person. Don't let me grow up too fast, and enjoy every moment."
"Let Them Be Little" puts some of those same thoughts into a
parent's words and contains a typical Lonestar line written to
etch itself on the memory of anyone familiar with little ones'
nighttime insecurities: "Let them sleep in the middle."
There are more such moments. "Somebody's Someone," recounts the
impact of news of a soldier's death on someone who never knew the
soldier but can't help empathizing with people who do. "That Gets
Me" locks onto little things a woman does unconsciously, curling a
finger in her hair or laughing so hard she sheds tears, which
enthrall her significant other. The repentant title track longs to
return to romantic bliss after an argument, while "What I Miss The
Most" memorializes loss and the tallying-up of memories. "Now,"
the only song the band wasn't involved in writing, is insistently
and hauntingly in-the-moment, a lover trying to persuade another
that the past no longer exists, the future may never come, and
"right here, right now" is the only reality. "From There To Here,"
a duet in which McDonald is teamed with Randy Owen of Alabama, is,
as McDonald says, "a journey song" that follows three epic
treks--of the Wright brothers and air travel, of a 50-year
marriage and of a band's (in fact, at least two bands') rise from
garage to glam.
Much of Lonestar's ascension came after the recording of the
band's first two albums and dates from the beginning of its
association with Dann Huff. The most important initial aspect of
the teaming with Huff, Sams says, may have been that the
celebrated producer took time to come out on the road to see the
group work. Previous producers had only seen them doing cover
material when they signed their record contract, Britt says, and
on the first CDs, Britt ended up being the only member who
contributed significant instrumental work. Lonestar has seen its
greatest success follow the gaining of increased measures of
freedom to generate sounds authentically its own. That freedom,
symbolized by the new co-production arrangement, reaches its
highest level in Let's Be Us Again.
Nevertheless, the group has remained firmly committed to using the
greatest resource Nashville offers -- the co-writing aid of some
of the world's finest. Those listed on Let's Be Us Again include
Bob DiPiero, Jeffrey Steele, Billy Dean, Chris Waters, Don
Pfrimmer, Tom Shapiro, Frank Myers, Brett James and Ron Harbin.
The new CD thus mines some of the best melodic and lyrical
expertise in Music City as well as the best of Lonestar.
"Being able to get together with these big writers and talk about
ideas on what you want to say as an artist has been a big key for
us," Sams says. "From a lyric standpoint we know what we want to
say, and they help form it into something that works."
The lyrical emphasis continues to be on those all-important
freeze-frames from the experience of America's diverse human
fabric, with which Lonestar's also-diverse membership intensely
identifies. Texans all, the four come from humble backgrounds.
They may now ride tour buses 200 days a year, but they still
remember getting to their first shows in a Jeep pulling a U-Haul
trailer.
They say, in fact, that in many ways their lives continue to
parallel those of their fans. When in town, Sams takes his
daughter to school every morning, Britt gets needled by buddies
for his tireless yard work, McDonald spends a lot of time on his
tractor and outings with his family to the local Wal-Mart, and
Rainwater keeps busy with a garage full of motorized toys.
“We're still just good ole boys from Texas," McDonald says.
It shows.
-
- Lonestar with Avrill from Perth
|
Tamworth
Rage Page
