“I’ve got soul, my mama says so,” sings Stephen Kellogg on the first track off Gift Horse, the newest album from Kellogg & The Sixers, and by the time the album closes, you won’t disagree with his mama one bit. Equal parts country-rock, Springsteen earnestness and Lucero’s own barroom grit, October’s Gift Horse is a sturdy 11-song collection from the band, which made its name playing the rock circuit around the University of Massachusetts. At times listening to Gift Horse, you mistake them for a band of Texas red-dirters, but their sound is from the cradle of the American Revolution. Prior to forming the Sixers in 2003, Kellogg was a seasoned solo artist, releasing a slew of albums from 1994 to 2002, full of songs about sadsacks, jilted lovers and drunken heroes, which would inform the output of the Sixers years later.
This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2011.