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This is a review of the new Tracy Jones album “You’re a Legend” (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal). It’s good. You’ll like it. It’s a sort of nuevocountry with a quasiurban California spin. Take the song “In No Time” for instance which namechecks Oakland and L.A. and smog and flying Southwest. That’s what I’m talking about.
Anyway, that’s the third song on the album. The second song on the album borrows its melody from Eric Wreckless’s “Whole Wide World.” I really like that song. I never heard it before watching Stranger than Fiction (a movie I really like).
This is one of those music beats where the movie clearly thinks I know the song but, in fact, I don’t. This happens a lot to me. To my wife’s everlasting embarrassment, this is the first time I heard, for example, the following songs, (spoilers!):
Where were we?
Oh yeah. Tracy Jones.
The promotional text for the album called it “your chill-suburban-faux-country-get together choice for these times” which could well be true. I’m not sure I’m up on the chill-suburban-faux-country-get together genre, so I might not know about the most relevant competition, but, I mean, as chill-suburban-faux-country-get together vibes go, this one definitely goes.
But I’m not so sure what is country and what’s faux-country. I think my favorite country album at the moment is Jason Isbell’s Weathervanes, but I don’t think that’s because he was born in an unincorporated community on the Alabama/ Tennessee border and his parents were both under twenty when he was born. I think it’s because his melodies are catchy and he’s maybe the best storyteller working in music today. The best I know, anyway.
“You’re a Legend” is more vignette-based storytelling. Little glimpses. I like that. It’s safer, if you know what I mean. Helps the album work as both something to pay attention to and something to leave running in the background.
But speaking of who should be allowed to be country, how about the re-surgence of black artists to the genre? They were there at it’s birth and it’s nice to see them insisting on their space. Of course, it can’t happen but man alive would I kill for a Charley Pride / Rhiannon Giddens duet!
You know, fifty years ago, if you were to guess which Beatle would have a #1 album, I don’t think many people would have said Ringo Starr. But it does make a weird kind of sense. He was the least stressed about being a Great Artist or whatever—he was just happy having fun making music with his friends. The All-Starr Band exemplifies this. And his new album’s genesis sounds like it was built from more happy accidents through time spend with friends.
I haven’t managed to make a Tracy Jones concert yet even though he regularly holds free ones around town when I’m out of town. I suppose it’s my timing that’s terrible. But as Tracy Jones might say, we might as well chill and do the mostest.
Give it time. It’ll happen.
