Junior Brown – Down Home Chrome

No country artist has opened, or cleaned out, more ears than Junior Brown has with his trusty guit-steel, which can take the stuffing out of a standard arrangement with the crazed authority of a buzzsaw on the loose in a pillow factory. Brown isn’t always the most convincing songwriter, though, a weakness no amount of prowess or audacity on that 12-string Telecaster/steel guitar hybrid can overcome. So it goes on Down Home Chrome, his debut for Telarc, which delivers some fine moments when he sticks to wielding that ax but bogs down when he aims for serious emotion or simply struggles to make the lyrics fit the measures.

God bless American troops everywhere, but “Jimmy Jones”, Brown’s spoken and sung number about a soldier who gives up his life to save his compatriots from a surprise attack, is beyond the pale of compassion — mawkish and banal and awkward even by the usual standards of such tunes. Where is Sgt. Barry Sadler when we need him? As for “Two Rons Don’t Make It Right”, it won’t cause a haiku master like fellow Texan Gurf Morlix (“Were you lyin’ down when you were standing me up?”) to lose any sleep.

Even when Brown is trusting his guit-steel to tell his tales, he is no cinch to score points. With its delirious twists and turns and helium-high bent notes, “Hill Country Hot Rod Man” is primo Junior, and once he gets past his transparent debt to Albert King on the extended “Monkey Wrench Blues”, he takes you to the bank of personal style. But “Foxy Lady”, which would seem to be overflowing with possibilities considering his debt to Jimi Hendrix — there was a time you couldn’t find a review of the barrel-voiced Brown that didn’t tag him a cross between Hendrix and Ernest Tubb — lacks the twangification that would make it stand out. Sticking close to the original, Brown pens a fan letter to Jimi without providing any signature rewards of his own.