If it doesn't make you want to take a shot of whiskey, then it's not real country music.
Don't even attempt to justify the bogus bootstraps being peddled by Nashville these days. The Ridgerunners Band (http://cdbaby.com/cd/ridgerunners) are no pretenders; this is 100% roots rock with no artificial ingredients.
Echoing back to the glory days of Hank Williams, Sr. and Johnny Cash, the Ridgerunners deliver authentic, blue-eyed country music to the 21st century. And the group makes no compromises to contemporary fluff, either. Even the production here has a low-fi beauty to it, as if it was recorded for the scratchy vinyl that inspired the sounds within.
The Ridgerunners are actually a duo - vocalist/guitarist Jimmy Trip and bassist/keyboardist Buttons Magoo (do they even make names like that anymore, ladies and gentlemen?). These two men are lost in time, producing dirty blues and liquor-kissed twang for the broken-hearted or naughty. On "After All These Years," Trip is drunk with love, his slow drawl oozing with unashamed, delirious affection. Trip is a cowboy whose hat has been hit by Cupid's arrow; "After All These Years" and "First Time Around" are touching in their sloppy admissions of everlasting affection.
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Roy Orbison must've had a tremendous impact on Trip because you can hear the dreamy melancholia in his crooning, especially "Sunday Morn-In Blues," wherein his voice is pushed to the front of the mix, and "Meet Me On the Corner."
The personal, come-as-you-are direct approach of Trip's songwriting is both charming and exhilarating. In "Meet Me On the Corner," Trip sings, "Your mom and papa/They don't like me anymore," and you can clearly imagine those were his own adolescent thoughts, the memory still stinging even after decades have passed. On "In My Soul," Trip sings from the perspective of a guilty sinner, wondering if his soul was worth Jesus saving it.
Those used to the overly polished product of modern-day Nashville will probably be baffled by the at-home immediacy and slow tempos of the Ridgerunners; however, this is true country music. Accept no substitutes.
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