Marleen Bussma – Deep Tracks, has two (or more) meanings here. Here you will hear a Cowboy Poet who ‘gets’ the art of conversational storytelling. If you appreciate that too, Marleen Bussma is for you. We could make her a study in it! When the poem is a portrayal of something deceptively simple yet worthy (the title track, “For Better Or Worse,” “She’s Married To The Job”), her tone reflects it. When the subject is serious, wondrous or mythic (“Hunter’s Moon,” “They Call It Dead Horse Point,” “Shadows And Dust”), she ladles just enough wonder over it, never slopping over the edge. Like I say, it’s an art.
Then come Bussma’s words. The aforementioned “They Call It Dead Horse Point” may just haunt me for life! But her “Hoofbeats With A Heart” struck home in a different way. Her superimposing of the B-Western and Being Western ideas brought back a vision of me as a kid, having just thrilled to one of Roy & Dale’s concocted musical roundups of bad guys. Sighing, I said to my mother “gee I wish we lived out west.” She laughed, saying “Honey, we do! This is New Mexico!!” A different one from Bussma’s, but a jolting awakening to the real nonetheless.
My advice is to let Marleen Bussma open your eyes to the real. She’s so good at it. Eighteen tracks. Highly recommended.
CD: $18 ppd from Marleen Bussma, 1094 Homestead Dr. E., Dameron Valley, UT 84783 or though marleenbussma.com
– by Rick Huff
Marleen Bussma – Deep Tracks