Charlie Sizemore Band – Good News
Charlie Sizemore is back. After a five-year hiatus, the practicing attorney, and former Clinch Mountain Boy, delivers a hard-hitting album of bluegrass and straight country music. The song topics are familiar: lost love, found love, Jesus, the Civil War, drinking problems. Sizemore’s mellow voice is especially well suited to the country-flavored material. He gives Randy Travis’s “Hard Rock Bottom Of Your Heart” a sincere reading, and “I’ve Fallen And I Can’t Get Up” is a far better tune than its hackneyed title would suggest. Perhaps most refreshing is Sizemore’s subtle, tongue-in-cheek humor. “Alison’s Band” imagines the prestige of working with Alison Krauss (“I’d even drive her bus to hear her cuss when she’s trying to teach me the solo”). And “Blame It On Vern” aims to pin the aforementioned drinking problems on the bad influence of Vern Gosdin.