Track Listings (16) - Disc #1| All Artists: James Talley Title: Touchstones Members Wishing: 0 Total Copies: 0 Label: Cimarron Records Release Date: 4/23/2002 Genres: Country, Folk, Pop Styles: Outlaw Country, Classic Country, Neotraditional, Traditional Folk, Singer-Songwriters Number of Discs: 1 SwapaCD Credits: 1 UPCs: 693249101128, 069324910112 |
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Search - James Talley :: Touchstones
 | James Talley Touchstones Genres: Country, Folk, Pop
Merle Haggard has at times been known as the Poet of the Common Man, but the title could just as easily apply to James Talley. A fine Nashville-based singer-songwriter with a gift for writing stirring portraits of working-... more » |
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Amazon.com Merle Haggard has at times been known as the Poet of the Common Man, but the title could just as easily apply to James Talley. A fine Nashville-based singer-songwriter with a gift for writing stirring portraits of working-class heroes, Talley has kicked around for years without getting the big break he deserves. In the 1970s he recorded four highly regarded albums for Capitol, none of which are currently in print. For the exquisitely beautiful Touchstones, Talley has culled 16 of his favorite songs from those albums and rerecorded them with a crack band of Texans, including guitarist Tommy Detamore (who coproduced) and fiddler Bobby Flores, both of whom worked with the late Doug Sahm. In a simple voice that sounds a bit like Tom T. Hall's, Talley sings about everyday people just barely getting by, like the "pot-bellied truckers drinkin' coffee / With a redheaded waitress named Louise" in "Tryin' Like the Devil," or the dying "black lung miner from East Tennessee" in "Give My Love to Marie." The gorgeous "Sometimes I Think About Suzanne" finds Talley reminiscing about a lost love--and wondering what might have been. Never mind that the album's 16 songs are all at least 25 years old--they're timeless. --David Hill Similar CDs
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CD ReviewsSongs for the American life Jerome Clark | Canby, Minnesota | 04/23/2002 (5 out of 5 stars) "James Talley's music comes out of his roots in the Southwest, part of a musical culture that, seemingly effortlessly, generated an organic blend of blues, folk, honkytonk, and big-city swing. Talley sounds like the natural heir to Bob Wills, Woody Guthrie, Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Merle Haggard, without really sounding like any of them -- though if Guthrie had written it, the gorgeous, cryptic "Richland, Washington" would be judged among his masterpieces.Through his uncondescending sympathies with the struggles of working people, Talley's songs often have an at least implicit political subtext, without ever devolving into preachy protest anthems or "progressive" sloganeering. This is music for grown-ups living in the real world, which is to say that you can't be there without getting your heart, and maybe even your nose, broken. Like all great artists, Talley's hand is as sure as his eye is sharp and his ear is keen. His characters are recognizable human beings, not Popular Front cartoons. If Talley has no easy answers for them, he can celebrate their endurance. The people, yes, but without tears. Even when the subject is a familiar one, such as a rodeo rider ("Calico Gypsy") or a bluesman ("Bluesman"), Talley never falls into cliches. In their evocations of vanishing American worlds, "Gypsy" and "Bluesman" bring to mind songs that set their respective gold standards, namely Ian Tyson's "Old Cheyenne" and Bob Dylan's "Blind Willie McTell." I cannot give voice to higher praise than that. Songs like "Deep Country Blues" and "Give My Love to Marie," for all their inherent darkness, rise to a kind of luminous, transcendant beauty few songwriters can hope to touch. The songs' power owes a debt to the magnificent Texas country band Talley assembled for these sessions. Everything comes together, and what emerges is, as the old spiritual would put it, music from the true vine. These are American songs, earth songs, life songs. Touchstones will stay with you for a long, long while." Songs that grow on you, and quickly, too... William E. Adams | Midland, Texas USA | 07/27/2003 (4 out of 5 stars) "I found this CD at a bargain price and took a chance, having heard OF James Talley but never having heard him sing. The first time through it, I thought "the voice is nice, the accompaniment great, and the songs are pleasant without being special." What I meant was, none of these re-recorded 1970's compositions jumped off the disc and into my brain instantly, the way previously unfamiliar songs by Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Gordon Lightfoot, Kris Kristofferson, even John Denver might have. Heck, none of the songs on here quite reach the very best of Townes van Zandt or Guy Clark, for that matter. But they do grow on you. By the third or fourth listen, one is more and more impressed with the scope of these 16 high-quality selections. The tempos are varied, the subject matter, too, and the performer's point of view is always interesting. I agree with an earlier reviewer that "Richland, Washington", one of the shortest songs on the disc, is wonderfully stated. Also fine is the one James calls "Are They Gonna Make Us Outlaws Again?" Overall, this is a nice hour of competent, confident folk/country/blues performances. While it is my first Talley CD, no way will it be my last."
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