Tucson the sunny resort and retirement mecca is a thing apart from the Tucson where real folks have lived out generations in blue collars, abiding in trailers with broad vistas of creosote, lavender mountains and endless glare. Swamp coolers hum between their biennial maintenance while contemporary cowboy-equivalents boast their boasts, spin big dreams and oppose their existential thirst with a battalion of beers.
The Peacemakers have dabbled a bit in the border flavor, desperate humor and proximate death of these bad lands. Kevin Pakulis outright nails it. His music represents the best of a genre heard mostly in timeworn saloons throughout the mining, ranching and logging towns that dot the southwest. Folks gather with their extended soap-opera families, young and old, to two-step and swing-dance their cares away, mostly to covers of traditional country tunes about other folks far away.
Pakulis, though, writes songs just for them. With the first line of the title track, New tires on the old truck/and Im a happy man, he lets you know who this record is about. His protagonist has more in common with the truckers and dirt farmers of the midwest and southeast than with his neighbors in Tucsons trendy barrios and foothills.
Pakulis skillful and occasionally brilliant guitar histrionics limn the frustration and aggression underlying this generally macho way of life in a way that would satisfy the hardest rock fan. Dancing, though, depends on the rhythm section, and buttressing Pakulis plainspoken lyrics and singalong choruses is the inventive and timely bass playing of Larry Lerna, a former member of the house band at the Los Angeles House of Blues. Lerna has a remarkable feel for the music of the people, and his embellishments contribute substantially to these earthy but polished arrangements.