Like his labelmate brothers Charlie and Bruce Robison, fellow Texan singer-songwriter Jack Ingram plays smart and interesting, yet accessible, country music that is mostly ignored by mainstream country radio. Hey You is the follow-up to 1997’s rowdy gem, the Steve Earle/Ray Kennedy-produced Livin’ Or Dyin’. Produced by one of Earle’s former Dukes, Richard Bennett, Hey You is a more polished, less rowdy affair. It’s not that the honky-tonk is gone from Ingram; it’s just that this honky-tonk is less smoky and there aren’t as many fights.
He’s still far from tame, though, as evidenced by songs such as “Barbie Doll”, “Anymore Good Loving”, and “Mustang Burn”, which begins with the line, “I don’t give a damn that your car’s on fire.” But Ingram’s sweet, country pop side is the focus, particularly on “Feel Like I’m Falling In Love” and the tap-your-toes-and-shout-hell-yeah title track. Unfortunately, there also are a few limp country-pop songs such as “I Would” and “How Many Days”; if they do play Ingram on country radio, those are the ones they’d probably pick.
Ingram rebounds from such missteps with “Inna From Mexico”, a lonesome story-song that he gets exactly right, with a voice that’ll get you way down in your insides.
