You have to admire any country musician that mentions the Dixie Chicks in one of their songs without any animosity whatsoever.
Given how tightly-formatted country radio stations in the American South despise the Dixies for their candid opposition to President Bush and the war in Iraq, that takes balls. And so it was I was introduced to the old-school country sounds of Larry Rice (http://www.larryricemusic.com), whose soaring fiddles and giddy yodeling set the wayback machine about 40 years or so but with lyrics so timely - and timeless - that you don't notice the time shifts.
Everybody from the Dixie Chicks to Michael Moore to Moses himself (NRA cheerleader Charlton Heston, in case you don't know) are thrown into the same party in "Red State Blue State," as Rice and LB Roath poke fun at the ridiculous idealogical separation between liberals and conservatives. It's completely exaggerated by the media, as Rice and Roath seem to get, and only tears people apart. The song is damn funny because it exposes the goofiness of it all.
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Most of the album is actually less tongue-in-cheek. "I Cry" is a sincere heartbreak track, very much in the vein of the late Hank Williams, Sr. The loving "Elegant Lady" finds Rice entering Americana territory while the sensuous "Love Time" is something altogether different, a chill-out cut that just might nab Rice an audience outside of his country fanbase.
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