Bill Kirchen

Any time twangbanger Bill Kirchen gets together with his old boss Nick Lowe, I'm in. Recorded mostly in London with ringers like keyboardist Geraint Watkins, this is a tour de force of the Kirchenist religion, ranging from the twangiest Bakersfield tonk to make-you-cry country soul. Kirchen also hammers out a heady mix of twang and doo-wop on his own composition "Working Man" ("A working man can't understand / Why he can't afford a ticket to the Promised Land") and on Blackie Farrell's bluesy country nail-in-the-brain killer "Skid Row in My Mind." Kirchen touches his Michigan roots with a twisted take on Shorty Long's "Devil with the Blue Dress," and simply annihilates the honky-tonk nugget "Heart of Gold."

Countrified rock by a real twangbanger.

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More About

• Bill Kirchen
• Nick Lowe
• Geraint Watkins
• Bakersfield
• Blackie Farrell

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There must be 300 years of touring/recording experience on this album. Its beauty comes from the journeyman "keep it simple" skill and care that these elder statesmen of rock bring to their countrified work. They are master musicians who knew what they were looking for in these sessions and captured it. Despite the Who's Who of British new wave players here, with Kirchen delivering lines like "it was born at the junction of form and function" and wielding his own "hammer of the honky-tonk gods," this sounds like an Americana classic from the first note on. Bill Kirchen performs Saturday, March 10, at the Continental Club, 3700 Main, 713-529-9899.