Mount your horse, hitch up the wagons, “It’s a wonderful day for a ride”. This is how the opening track For the West begins.
It sets the tone for an album which brings together a pair of modern day cowboys, George Mann from America and Mick Coates from Australia. Their respective geographical origins are jokingly referenced in Mann’s closing song: ’Til the Cows and ’Roos Come Home.
Over eleven tracks they take turns on writing and vocal duties. They each contribute a song entitled Ghosts of the Old West as though in friendly competition with one another as to who could pen the most tragic tune.
There’s no mistaking which singer is which. Coates’ rich baritone illustrates how and why he came to front previous bands playing Johnny Cash covers. The two met at Maldon Folk Festival as he was singing tunes like Ira Hayes which is included in this collection.
Not all the tunes are classic western songs, Leiber and Stoller’s The Reverend Mr. Black, is a story of a man standing up to a bully while the piano ballad They Call Her Dolly Parton is not about the famous Dolly but is a touching portrait of a woman in a nursing home in upstate New York.
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Despite the fact that the overall mood of this record is an affectionate tribute to traditional songs of the ‘old west’, there is also a recognition that the pressures of modern world make these somewhat anachronistic.The lines from Anymore acknowledge that tunes like those of Hank Williams belong to another time and place: “When the lessons of the past have become something to ignore, it just gets hard to sing those songs anymore..
The nostalgia is still uppermost but the ghosts appear in many forms.
George Mann’s website
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