"Long Distance Man" starts off with some fuzzy guitar work backed with some horns, making for a tasty little blues-funk concoction well-suited to Blakeman's voice. As infectious as it is, you might not even realize that it only has six lines' worth of lyric. But hey, it uses them very well. "Easy Goin' Woman" continues in the man-who-wants-to-travel theme, and just as its title indicates, it's an easy-goin' song. The horns add a little more muscle to "Old Folks Blues," which asks the question, "Is it a crime to have a good ol' time?" No, it's not, definitely not if it sounds as fun as that song.
Guitar and keyboard push to the forefront on the bracing honky-tonk of "So Many Honky Tonks" (..."and so little time;" what a hook!) and the Lee Roy Parnell-esque "Don't It Make You Wanna Dance." Yes, Shy, it does. He surely stays out there at the honky-tonk for a long time; at "A Quarter to Three," there "ain't nobody bigger than" him. And of course, once he's done overnighting at the honky-tonk, "Late Night Early Morning" explores the morning after in a similarly familiar yet tuneful way. (And as if you haven't had enough evidence yet, he does give praise to the whiskey and the wine — and the Man Upstairs™ — in "Livin' Proof.") Continuing in the religious theme is the bouncy gospel-esque "Satin Sheets," even if the lyrics are just a bit... well, weird ("praise the Lord and pass the mescaline," followed by something about ceiling lights, playing rock music, growing long hair, and oh yeah, satin sheets. Jeanne Pruett this ain't.)
"Dragon Fly" [sic] uses inspired insect metaphors, comparing the narrator to a dragonfly who's gonna see his "butterfly babe" at the catfish pond. The chorus is a bit of a copuout with its "doo doo doos," but not unlike "All I Want to Do," it manages to lodge itself rather firmly in your ear. The bouncy "Swamp Water Whiskey" is similarly backwoods-y in its lyric, keeping up the blues-y feel built up so far and filtering it through Southern rock and sounding like a prime cut from an early Kentucky Headhunters album.
"Cannon Ball" shares a similar acoustic approach to "Dragon Fly" and a similarly broken-up compound word for its title. Although the first verse stumbles over mixed metaphor after mixed metaphor, the second and third offer interesting vignettes of lonelineness and death, but ultimately, the hook seems greatly disconnected from the rest of the song and thus undermines any power that the rest of the song had.
The album finishes off with the mostly acoustic "Save a Little Room," its jangly, almost Celtic melody at odds with its lyrics about being so loud and rowdy, but when it gets to the chorus, the song's true message comes to light: "Save a little room in your heart / And I'll save some room for you." Of course, "Still hung over from Vegas, and that was two weeks ago" is a gem in its own right.
Texas country is quite the unusual blend overall, taking a little bit of everything and mixing it all together into a big bowl of Texas chili. And of course, no two people make chili exactly the same way (I still have yet to find a recipe that tops my mom's), so no two Texas artists are exactly alike. Shy Blakeman sounds a little more energetic on some tracks than on others, but at the same time, there's plenty of spice and substance to Blakeman's album.
You can suppor Shy Blakeman by purchasing this album digitally at Amazon | iTunes.
You can also pick up a physical copy of the album at Amazon.
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