Waylon Jennings – Closing In On the Fire
Archive
Posted On August 1, 1998
Claire is up to her dainties in headlines and deadlines, perpetually prolificking her pulchritudinally printable prosaics, but the missive Mister (in his shummer sorts, no less is more) just hove through my alcove and C-deposited Waylon Jennings’ 72nd like a prisoner release. And so, while I am like Eve apple-tempted to be a first-class lass and let him cancel my peekaboo postage, I without dilly-dally shilly-shally unrung the phone, sketch the blinds, and like a pilgrim’s pumps buckle down and get on the good foot, scribing out a diatribal wherefore or a flock of larks, as the music Mussolinis. Here, like Rich Little’s bare butt on a bumpy beach, are my impressions:
“Closing In On The Fire”: Sweaty-swampy Tony Joe White groover. My fretty regret: Tony Joe is sweatier and swampier.
“I Know About Me, Don’t Know About You”: Waylon’s weary waxing like an accountant on a tightrope counterbalances Travis Tritt’s butt strutt.
“She’s Too Good For Me”: Sting’s lyrics are eighth-gradey, but his bass is bouncy, and Waylon gallops right up to the edge of a dreamy-squeamy Sheryl Crow’s-foot bridge.
“Just Watch Your Mama And Me”: The verses are trite, but the chorus is right. Waylon tips back his outlaw hat and denture-whistles gentle like Ben advice over a longing-not-shorting piano.
Claire whacks Waylon into her holy country trinity for infinity, but she also like a snarly sniper cusses and swears to shoot straight, and this album is no bulls-eye. Butt like roast, while some cuts are overdone (enough rehashishing the drug-busty days), some cuts are right on the mignoney. Grandpa Jennings is best when he acts his age — and on the like a screen door spring closer, the Keith not Moon Richards/Jagger-meister number “No Expectations”, he proves like a theorem that he can rock weary and still rock steady.
Claire now concludes dudes by taking like a sailor the liberty of dispensing like a nice shot of horseradish mustard some Dear crabby Abby advice: For number 73, dump like a truck the production, move into the mike like it’s an old sharecropper shack, turn up the knob labeled scratchy, and lay it on us, old man.
