Dallas Wayne Album Review:
Montgomery Gentry attitude minus the rock influences at 2006-05-19
Youve got to love Dallas Wayne, who continues to produce solid honest-to-God country music in an age when too many have wimped out. While Im sure that Dallas is aware of the Iggles, Skynard, Marshall Tucker, ZZ Top and their ilk, very little of it shows up in his music. While I like every song on the CD, I guess my favorite song is You Can Count On Me where the basic premise is a warning to the woman that she can count on him to mess things up. Your Biggest Fan is a stalker song, but a cleverly done one. Tell It To The Jukebox is a bartender telling his customer that hes maintained his sanity by having his bar stool fools foist their sad stories off on the jukebox. Junior Samples is not about the legendary Hee-Haw star but uses his name in some word-play.If youre looking for politically correct , well-mannered country music, youll not find it here. If youre looking for the twangy stuff - the good stuff - youve done found it! 1. 3:30 in the afternoon 2. Im your biggest fan 3. junior samples 4. under the overpass 5. tex-tosterone 6. its all over, all over town 7. shes good to go 8. you can count on me 9. tell it to the jukebox 10. crank the hank 11. still know how to cry 12. downhill slide
Dallas Wayne Album Review:
If you like your honky tonk straight-up at 2005-05-02
Big Dallas Waynes been around for years. After recording, and touring in Europe, and Finland especially, he came back home and settled down to write some of todays best true country music. His two releases for Hightone Records are great, and hes outdone himself with this new beauty. The songwriting is just plain staight-up honky tonkin juke-box country that sounds like it couldve been written yesterday, today, or 30 years ago. Robbie Fulks really helped Dallas along a few years ago by pushing for this guy. Fulks saw what people are begining to see today; this guys a major force to be reckoned with. A strong voice, keen sense of humour, and a passion for real music will make you one his biggest fans.

Dallas Wayne Album Review:
honkytonk straight up at 2001-08-26
If you didnt listen to what passes for country radio, youd swear wed entered a golden age of honkytonk music. Alas, as Dallas Wayne observes in his brief liner notes, mainstream country just gets more diluted and deluded. So thank Hanks ghost, or whomever, for the likes of Wayne, Roger Wallace, Heather Myles, Justin Trevino, James Hand, Don Walser, Dale Watson, and others who carry the hard-country flag on independent labels. Waynes last outing, Big Thinkin, his first for Hightone, amounted to a collaboration with Robbie Fulks, who co-produced and wrote or co-wrote all of the songs. The result, a brilliant, edgy exercise, alternated -- or, sometimes, fused -- wit and mockery with despair and violence. The effect, one might say, was too country even for too country. This time Fulks appears only once, as co-composer with Wayne of the last cut. As Wayne takes charge with co-producer Bruce Bromberg, Thinkins rock inflections largely disappear in favor of more traditional hillbilly-shuffle rhythms and slow heartache melodies. This is honkytonk served straight up, and if you like it that way, youll like this CD a whole lot. Wayne writes in-the-tradition songs well, and he has a good ear for other peoples songs. Its a pleasant surprise to see Shadows of My Mind, a minor hit for Vernon Oxford in the 1970s (even then it seemed about 25 years behind its time), resurrected, and done justice. Happy Hour, memorably recorded on a 1980s Rounder album of the same name by the late Ted Hawkins, is another treat. So, come to think of it, is everything else here.
Dallas Wayne Album Review:
Solid, straight-ahead honky-tonkin country at 2001-09-03
After recording a half-dozen albums in Finland (!), this native Missourian returned to the States and signed with the Hightone label. This second LP for Hightone sticks to the twangy straight-ahead country and honky-tonk sounds that are his stock-in-trade. His previous collaboration with alt.country stalwart Robbie Fulks is slimmed down to one co-write (I Hit the Road (and the Road Hit Back)), giving favor to Waynes own pen, and some well-selected covers (including an oddly cheery take of Ray Frushays Cheatin Traces - recently covered by The Wandering Eyes).Waynes stinging criticism of modern country (most notably in the press materials and liner notes) might grow tiresome if his most effective refutation of mainstream countrys diluted and deluded state wasnt his music. But from Chris Lawrences stuttering guitar figures (tipping more than a few strings to Merle Haggards Strangers) to Waynes Vern Gosden-like bottom scraping vocals (with a twist of George Jones multi-note runs), this is heartfelt thowback, rather than calculated nostalgia. The subject matter (drinkin, women, the road, and several stripes of misery) doesnt pave any new ground, but, in large part, thats the point. Theyre well-worn classics for a reason: listeners can relate. (And no ones complaining about blues tunes using the same old chord progressions, are they?)Guest players Skip Edwards (piano) and Jay Leach (steel guitar) add weepy backing to Not a Dry Eye in the House, while Waynes band (The Roadcases) hold forth as a crack unit (unusual in the mainstream world of studio pickers who dont follow an album out onto the road). A solid outing that, sadly, you wont likely be hearing on a country radio station near you (unless you happen to have an Americana or non-commercial station nearby).


Dallas Wayne Album Editorial:
Imagine a burlier-sounding Randy Travis--stripped of varnish and steeped in the hard-twang influence of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard--and youll have some sense of the rough-hewn gem that is Dallas Wayne. Though the uptempo opener Bouncin Beer Cans Off the Jukebox smacks of generic traditionalism balladry such as The Stuff Inside and Not a Dry Eye in the House shows that theres plenty of room for subtlety and nuance within Waynes brand of heartfelt honky-tonk. Other highlights include the soulful shuffle of Happy Hour (a song associated with the late Ted Hawkins) and the closing anthem for touring musicians I Hit the Road (And the Road Hit Back) written with Robbie Fulks. Don McLeese

Dallas Wayne Album Review:
Tradition is back at 2000-09-15
Forget the glitter, forget the comerical side of todays country for Dallas Wayne brings tradtional country back. Honky-Tonk is back and strong as ever. This album reminds the listner of Waylon, Jones and Haggard in their prime and announces that a new traditionalist is here to stay. Dallas Wayne is the real deal - sit back and enjoy this album and hear how country is suppose to be sung
Dallas Wayne Album Review:
track#3 at 2001-09-14
Id like to know who wrote track number 3, like the writing,and where it going to,also like the vocals-not bad, for someone who wears a hat that big.
Dallas Wayne Album Review:
This is country! at 2000-10-23
I had the pleasure of seeing Dallas Wayne play live on Friday night. I picked up the CD right away, and its already become one of my favorites. When I got it home, I played it three times in a row! Most of the songs are absolutely great. The words are clever and witty, the playing is first-rate, and Dallass voice is as smooth as 12-year-old whiskey. I especially enjoy If Thats Country, which takes dead aim at some of the so-called country music on the radio. The title track aint bad either.


Dallas Wayne Album Editorial:
Too many alt-country bands seem to think that crudeness equals authenticity: unpolished songs; badly tuned guitars; reedy flat vocals. Dallas Wayne knows better. While never delving into modern Nashville slickness IBig Thinkin delivers a potpourri of deft picking soulful singing and crafted writing that cleaves to the authentic country tradition of three chords and the truth. Much of the credit goes to Robbie Fulks who coproduced the album and either wrote or cowrote with Wayne all dozen tunes. On a song like Lie Memory Lie Waynes voice recalls another new traditionalist John Anderson as it tells a tale of pain avoidance through selective memory. Its lyrics hew closely but easily to the conceit--always clever never forced. Then theres the through-composed Merle-style ballad The Only Way to Die where Wayne requires simply an acoustic guitar and his Hag baritone to bring a tear to your eye. In a world of pretenders both pop smooth and pseudo hip Dallas Wayne is the real deal. Michael Ross