Search - Randy Travis :: Storms of Life

A Landmark Country Recording

Mark J. Fowler | Okinawa, Japan | 02/02/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Since the days of Elvis there has been a blending of country and rock or pop singers and around the time Randy Travis recorded "Storms of Life" there were no big stars who sang with a "real country" voice that brought to mind earlier recordings of Lefty Frizzell and George Jones. (Interesting that the brief meteoric country career of Keith Whitley was taking off at the same time and overlapped so much that Whitley's "On the Other Hand" was released almost simultaneously with Travis' version on this recording.)



So much for the brief historical perspective: "Storms of Life" is a great, great Country Record. Randy Travis infuses these tracks with a bone-chilling baritone that quivers your eardrums and works it's way into your marrow. The songs are about obstacles in life and love-lives. On the title track he croons that "The Storms of Life are washing me away...." "1982" burns with the intensity of a man phoning an operator near the edge of insanity, begging to be reconnected to his wasted years. "On the Other Hand" gives the mental state of a man counting the reasons for his temptation, but restrained by the reminder of the golden band "on the other hand." "Reasons I Cheat" crosses that border as the tortured voice catalogues a grocery list of influences on the cheating narrator. Performed by a singer even a shade less talented this song would be pitiful, but Travis compiles his list beginning with a low growl and propelling the song toward a musical climax.



If I had to toss every Country record I own but one - I think this is the one I'd keep. I have almost 4,000 CDs, and most of the time I have the player set on random. This afternoon Shakira, The Beatles, Billy Joel and Beethoven's 5th Symphony preceded "Send My Body" on my player, and THIS is where I turned the volume up.



Country fan - I'm talking to you... Get it."

Coming full circle

collectivité | Havelock, NC USA | 05/14/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Unlike many albums in my collection, I feel a connection with Storms of Life. When I was a kid, My mother and I listened to this album in the car. Fast forward a decade or so. I had grown up, changed music tastes (going from country to Christian music with a dash of rock, pop, and R&B thrown in) and thought Country was music one lost brain cells listening to. This all ended when I rediscovered this album in her CD collection. It showed me what country should be: truthful and pure music about common emotions that people go through such as divorce ("No Place Like Home"), infidelity ("Reasons I Cheat") and others ("The Storms of Life"). These are favorites, but the singles such as "1982", "Diggin' up Bones", and "On the Other Hand" and other songs such as Send My Body and "My Heart Cracked (But It Did Not Break)" are good as well.In saying all of this, there are songs I've never been able to connect with such as "There'll Always Be a Honky Tonk Somewhere" and "Messin' with My Mind". For Country Music before it became about how much alcohol you can consume, a Republican Party auxiliary, or about the "badonkadonk" this is an album to own. I also recommend this to folks who like other genres as well but want to audition a country CD for your collection, try it! Come on down and sit a spell."