from a real good songwriter
This is one of those albums that makes the listener pick up each song and look them over like one would consider a selection of precious gems. Some you like right away, some are classics for all time, some you know you'll never care about. With the self-produced From a Real Good Home, Nashville singer/songwriter Alan Rhody has a passel of high-grade jewels in hand.
Actually, Rhody should be billed as a songwriter/singer, because his ability to write good American songs far exceeds his vocal abilities. "Drifter's Wind," "Real Big Country," and "Trainwreck of Emotion" show his power with the pen; "The Mother Road" and "Charlene and the Quarterback" aptly reveal his good to middlin' singing. The live tracks, recorded at the 1995 Kerrville Folk Festival, just give a hint of Rhody's warm stage presence, but they still manage to show that a person needs nothing more than an acoustic guitar to pack a punch.
A few missteps might raise your eyebrow — "Charlene and the Quarterback"'s transsexual bawdiness is a bit crass, "Hanging Out in the Highlands" fails to capture the feeling of Louisville's boho neighborhood — but one quickly shifts attention to the Jimmy Buffettes-que breeze of "New Maria," the songwriter's in-joke humor of "One of Two Thousand" (which refers to the number of songwriters that have been tapped by George Jones) and the wistful, post-Dylan sound of "That's Who I'd Be." And somebody could make a lot of money from the title track, a tune that reeks of ruggedness, perceptive observations and mild poeticism.
Something about a bad singer/songwriter makes the whole genre intolerable. Alan Rhody is one of those few good ones that makes such generalizations a mistake, and From a Real Good Home is all the proof you need. An album like this will always succeed because the songs are well-hewn.