Friday, January 20, 2006

CD Review:
Amanda Shires’ Being Brave

By Scott Chaffin

Amanda Shires' Album Cover - "Being Brave"

Last week The Wife, as is her wont, chucked a CD at me and asked me to review it. I groaned, as always, because some really sad stuff comes over the transom around these parts. But then she told me it was Pearl's new solo album, so I became less grouchy and more interested. Pearl is actually Amanda Shires, fiddler and lead vocalist for the Thrift Store Cowboys. Now, I've been watching TSC for five years now. They're one of the few bands that will un-ass me from a poker table on a weekend night. I've raved about them in this space many times, so if you've been keeping up, no more needs saying. If you haven't been keeping up, that's a YP.

Anyway, Amanda is front and center of TSC, and being a young good-looking gal, it's probably easy for people to be dismissive of her contribution to the whole sound. But I'm here to tell you that would be a big mistake. I've never not been impressed by her fiddle playing on the TSC tunes, both live and recorded. I always thought that she brought a certain west Texas sparseness and purity to their sound, an evocation of that big space and far horizon that makes west Texas what it is, and the musicians that come from there what they are. Say "fiddle" anywhere around here, of course, and the next thing people say is "Bob Wills is still the king." So there's no small set of boots to fill (nyuk, nyuk).

So, on to the CD Herself put in my hands. Being Brave is the title of the CD, and while that's just a bit too precious for the hard-charging girl that I've come to know, I slapped it in and gave it a spin. First off, it's definitely a fiddler's solo album. It's chock full of traditional and old-timey songs. And that's good, if you've got the good sense to appreciate a good fiddle. Now, let me state just straight out -- I'm no musicologist, so I have no clue if what I'm saying is true and proper, but I can hear pure Texas barn dance in here, I can hear pure Kentucky bluegrass in here, I can hear some slight Mexican influences (and I'd like some more), and (my favorite) I can hear goosebumpy Scots-Irish reels in here that make me all misty-eyed and eager to slice the throats of Englishers. Now, these are mostly instrumentals, backed up with proper accompaniment, and they are all expertly, superbly done. You'll tap your toes to the ones where you're supposed to, you'll close your eyes and drift away to the ones where you're supposed to, and you'll grin and two-step across the kitchen to the ones where you're supposed to.

But what blew me totally away were the songs where Amanda sings. Never in a million years was I expecting to hear such a heart-grabbing voice. It's not one of those pure, sweet angelic voices, yet it's not one of those gravelly, five-packs-a-day voices, either. There's just this completely unexpectedly mature and robust voice, with a couple of hitches in the gitalong that make it really unique and powerful. It helps that she's not really stretching it out or trying to win American Idol with it, but as much as I love those velvet-throated warblers, like a LeeAnn Rimes, Amanda is the kind of girl singer I really want to hear when I'm in a Texas honky-tonk. It probably also helps that I've followed this kid and the band for five years and have a great deal of respect for her (and the rest of them.) They've been out there doing it the way it needs to be done, selling themselves and their music, one bar-stool at a time.

Probably my favorite tunes on the disc are "Low and Lonely" (an old Roy Acuff tune), "Hearts Are Breakin" (one of Amanda's), and "Cattle in the Cane" (a traditional). But there's really nothing on here that would make me punch out to the next one. I'm really happy for Pearl that she pulled this together, that she used her bandmates Daniel and Colt to help record it (I don't want anything busting up TSC), and that it found it's way to my iPod. I hope that this isn't a one-off and that she can find the time to do some more solo fiddle & singing stuff. Because, you know, there just ain't that many good girl singers out there that suit me.

You can grab this CD here at Yellowhouse Music, and I recommend that you do that. You're not going to find something like this on iTunes or Amazon (more's their shame, no?).

This review originally appeared on Scott's blog, The Fat Guy. He is Cindy's husband and a heckuva poker player.

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