Track Listings (13) - Disc #1| All Artists: James Talley Title: Nashville City Blues Members Wishing: 1 Total Copies: 0 Label: Cimarron Records Original Release Date: 7/13/2000 Re-Release Date: 7/11/2000 Genres: Country, Folk, Pop, Rock Styles: Outlaw Country, Singer-Songwriters Number of Discs: 1 SwapaCD Credits: 1 UPC: 693249101029 |
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Search - James Talley :: Nashville City Blues
 | James Talley Nashville City Blues Genres: Country, Folk, Pop, Rock
James Talley is not here to sing polite well-meaning songs of protest. He's angry and frustrated and bitter and fed up. "I ain't leavin' this town, people," he snarls on the title track, "'til I get paid." From this CD-ope... more » |
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Amazon.com James Talley is not here to sing polite well-meaning songs of protest. He's angry and frustrated and bitter and fed up. "I ain't leavin' this town, people," he snarls on the title track, "'til I get paid." From this CD-opening lament of Music City's soullessness through the moody closer "I've Seen the Bear" ("is anything sacred, is anything fair?"), Talley is resilient, though not optimistic, in the face of a life where "not a dream comes true." In fact, the concept of dreams arises in nearly every song and, suffice to say, they're not remembered fondly; they're failed or lost or squashed. "Dreams don't mean a thing," he sings on "Workin' for Wages," "just the interest on a loan." Yet, as he writes in the lengthy autobiographical notes (subtitled "The price of dreams and keeping the faith"), "the dream is the spark," whether it comes true or not. "Dreaming," he writes, "is a way of coping with man's discontent." Similarly, the "blues" is a way to come to grips with man's discontent, and here he uses the blues in all of its permutations as a musical backdrop, shading his creations with the strains of mandolin, country-flavored pedal steel, or background soul singers. Ultimately, Nashville City Blues is about the healing effects of the blues, its loyal companionship and its knowing sympathy. On the gripping, reflective "So I'm Not the Only One," he yearns for others to share his misery and dissatisfaction--"play me the miles, play me the years, play me the hurt 'til you can feel it too"--and the blues becomes the ultimate populist thread. That universal bond, that shared disenchantment, is the only thing that makes it all bearable. "If it wasn't for the blues, I'd be crazy too," he moans. We hear you, James. We hear you. --Marc Greilsamer Similarly Requested CDs
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CD ReviewsIt's just life Jerome Clark | Canby, Minnesota | 07/20/2000 (5 out of 5 stars) "Nashville City Blues is as fine an album of country music as we're likely to hear this year. Of course the country music of James Talley has virtually nothing to do with most of what oozes out of Nashville these days, where the label "country" has been reduced to little than a marketing device, the music as deep and sincere as your average advertising jingle. Talley's music is so deeply rooted that he rhymes "Willie McTell" with "Lefty Frizzell" -- surely a first -- at a time when few Nashville performers have even heard of the latter, much the less the former, a legendary 1920s/30s bluesman. The opening cut, the blistering, blues-inflected title tune, rips into the corruption of a music business that is none of the first and all of the second. Even here, however, Talley injects a welcome note of humor, albeit dark and rueful: "I ain't leavin' town, people/Till I get paid" -- the joke being that in a place like Nashville nobody who deserves his due gets it, and only a noble fool believes otherwise. In a recording utterly devoid of phony or extraneous notes, the emotion is raw, unflinching in the manner of the masters who have been Talley's heroes and mentors, from Merle Haggard to B. B. King, as well as the ordinary working folks who find, against all odds and after bitter experience, a way to hold on to what matters. In life and in Nashville City Blues, dreams are mostly denied, and the dreamer pays even for daring to dream. Yet there's no cloying self-pity here; as Talley says in the moving "If It Wasn't for The Blues": "it's just life, ain't nothin' new." You live and find a way to make sense of it, and Talley makes sense of it with his music. In his first CD of original material in a long time, he and his band are as at home with the blues as with country, and the music is alternately tough, tender, sometimes even joyful, and always exactly right on. And all you Nashville hats, with your sappy greeting-card love songs, listen up to "When I Need Some Loving." Here's a love song for grown-ups. It shows what you can do without cliches. And for all its rootedness, Talley's art speaks in a confident and original voice, no borrowed words or emotions. It's just life, but Talley makes it something new." James Talley's Back, and I'm Hooked All Over Again! Under the Big Sky | Bozeman, MT USA | 07/20/2000 (5 out of 5 stars) "James Talley's music has floated into my head every now and again for years, ever since I first heard him in the 1970's. His voice, his lyrics, his storytelling songs-- he's always touched me with his ability to convey real feelings, about real people. Go check out his earlier stuff if you've not already familiar.Last fall, I fell in love with Talley's easy-on-the ear musical style all over again with the perfect match for the Oklahoma native-- an album of Woody Guthrie songs (Songs of Woody Guthrie and My Oklahoma Home), all material that Woody either wrote or had sung In an era of fancy big star tribute albums to Guthrie and other icons, Talley delivered it straight and clear -- the it was the best Guthrie tribute ever in my estimation, simply due to the honest simple renderings -- dusty and true.Now, this new recording, Nashville City Blues, which as I understand was actually recorded some time ago but not released until now, was sure worth the wait. The opening cut rips right in about the music business and even more about all of us fans of music and the corporate muckety-mucks that seem to worry more about financial ledgers than honest artistic expression. The biographical essay inside the jacket tells an incredible story, one many an American can relate to, when we settle in to explore our own roots and the eras we've all lived through. As Talley says, it's all about "the price of dreams and keeping the faith." I think the songs weave feelings about lots of dreams, his and ours. These songs on Nashville City Blues vary from solid country blues ramblin' feel to a rockin' defiant dance beat, self-confident yet tender. I hope Talley's faith continues and that there'll be more records to come, and that he'll find a whole new audience, besides guys like me who've been haunted by his songs since "To Get Back Home" spoke to me from his 1974 album "Got No Milk, No Bread, No Money, But We Sure Got A Lot of Love."" Nashville City Blues gunchiecarl | Australia | 08/17/2008 (3 out of 5 stars) "Little to excite here,unfortunately.These songs are mostly lightweight in the Talley cannon.Not until cut#4,"Rough Edge" can any serious toe-tapping be undertaken,and whilst "Baby Needs Some Good Times" and "I've Seen The Bear"are pleasant enough,only"When I Need Some Love",understated and elegant,and "If It Wasn't For The Blues" provide any vintage Talley.
Diehards will have to have this,his recordings being so cherished,but newcomers would be better off going to the Woody Guthtrie tribute,Bear Family's 2on1 re-issue of his stunning first 2 LPs,and latter-day "Touchstones" & "Journey" for Talley's finest moments." |
