George Jones – The Rock: Stone Cold Country 2001

In most ways, this is a textbook follow-up to George Jones’ eerie, surprisingly substantial 1999 album Cold Hard Truth — same basic song ideas only not quite as good, similar sound only not quite as strong, those mellow-but-boy-did-he-earn-it vocals only not quite as unfettered.

It’s not a bad Jones album, mind you — even the Garth duet could have been worse — and there are moments when it’s very good, but it just doesn’t quite measure up. Maybe it’s because so few of these songs have the confessional feel of those on Cold Hard Truth, and though Jones can be great with any material, he’s greater with confessional stuff.

Here, he’s as adept on uptempo romps such as “I Got Everything” as he is on the slow ones such as “I Am”, on which he represents the very Voice of Experience itself. He gets sentimental about everything — including a guitar on “Wood And Wire”, the Vietnam Wall on “50,000 Names”, his father on “The Man He Was”, and Hank Williams on “Tramp On Your Street” (which was not purely sentimental when Billy Joe Shaver wrote and first recorded it) — but that’s never stopped Jones in the past. “Half Over You” is a beaut, with a melody that sounds lifted from so many other Jonesers but isn’t, a sympatico string arrangement, and a vocal performance that works because of the low-key way George plays his upper and lower registers against each other. Ironically, it’s one of the most “produced” songs on the disc (by Emory Gordy Jr., who splits the tracks with Keith Stegall, except for the “Beer Run” single produced by Allen Reynolds). It’s got fiddles and steel, it’s got George Jones, and it’s stone cold country as advertised.

But unless you’re a Jones completist (and what a frustrating lifestyle that must be!), you’re better off with its still-underacknowledged predecessor.