The Singing Redneck
Tracy Lawrence
Tracy Lawrence
Tracy Lawrence has had an incredible life, and he's only in his thirties. He's been shot, shot at people, been stabbed, had domestic troubles with his wife in a Las Vegas Hotel, and so on.. His career has endured more "career killing incidents" enough for ten artists, yet he continues to endure and survive. Tracy is your typical full-blooded American Redneck who, like many redneck musicians before him, has made some - shall we say -"poor choices" in his lifetime. However, I would argue that having a criminal record is essential to being a true traditional country singer.
So it's a new year and there's a new attitude from Tracy Lawrence, evident in his new self-titled release on Atlantic/Warner Brothers. Lawrence not only wanted to go back to the roots of his music but to the roots of country. The CD, co-produced by Tracy Lawrence and his long-time -producer Flip Anderson, accomplishes all the goals that Tracy outlined.
Tracy Lawrence is a "country" album by any definition. Lawrence even said during interviews promoting the album said that he wanted to go back into the vaults to find songs that were pitched to the legends of the business (e.g. George Jones, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings). It's shocking that the tunes that Lawrence found haven't been cut before.
Most of the tunes are up-tempo type songs that will surely rock the dance halls and honky tonks across the country. My picks include the first track, "Crawlin Again," has one of the coolest lines in the whole album: "It takes a mama twenty years to make a boy a man, but another woman 20 seconds to have them crawlin' again". My other favorite tune is " It's Got You All Over It," a song about hearing a new love song on the radio and thinking about your baby.
I will put a disclaimer on this album: don't buy it if you don't like traditional country, because this redneck doesn't know how to sing anything else, thank God!