Wylie & The Wild West – Bunchgrass
If we’re counting correctly, this marks the twenty-second album for this near legendary assemblage. And it’s one in which the Yahoo Yodeler omits something notable. Yodeling!! Not that most will miss it. There’s a lot more than that to like and to recommend here as Wylie & The Wild West continue their fight against the corporate Country norm.
Anything Wylie Galt Gustafsen elects to record is a potential pick in an album, but we’ll name some despite that! From his originals…the swinging “Straight Up Country Music,” the pumping “Girlfriend Is A Barrel Racer” (…“I’m a’chasin’ her and she’s chasin’ cans”), the advice given in “Don’t Say Whoa” (pronounced here “ho,” by the way), “Birch Creek” with its Dallas Frazier-style catchy rhythm and Wylie’s treatment of the classic “Cowboy Soliloquy.” Cover picks are Gordon Lightfoot’s “Ribbon Of Darkness” (the CD’s first designated “Radio Single”), H. Myles’ “Rum & Rodeo,” Butch Hancock’s “Dry Land Farm” and Townes van Zandt’s poetic ballad “At My Window.” Fourteen tracks, highly recommended.
by Rick Huff
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Wylie & The Wild West – Bunchgrass