TheCountryAngel: TURNTABLE TUESDAY/ WEDNESDAY REVIEW

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

TURNTABLE TUESDAY/ WEDNESDAY REVIEW - Cheater's Waltz

Good morning, friends.

I do apologize for moving this review. I spent about three hours in the early morning pulling weeds but still managed to get overheated on Monday. I slept all day trying to recoup. Yesterday (Tuesday) was back out in the garden for more of the same but this time I paid attention to my body and quit before I had a repeat.

There ya go! Now we're back on track and I'm excited to bring you the review of this new album from Michelle and Jason Hannan - CHEATER'S WALTZ

Like Michelle, I've probably heard a concept album ( I even own a copy of Redheaded Stranger) but didn't really know that was a category. When I heard the back-story for Cheater's Waltz I knew, as a writer, this was a unique piece of work. Did I mention the idea for this album came from Jason? The man is amazingly creative. He and Michelle blend their thoughts, songwriting, and over-all music together in a way that makes them stand out among the masses.

If you're wondering what a concept album is, here's the cliff-note. As opposed to a collection of songs that all have a common theme, the songs flow from one to the other, telling a story. Each song is connected to the one previous and the one that follows, much like links in a chain. Like a good book, you have a beginning, a middle and an end... with all the other happenings in between. As a writer, I can tell you those points are not always easy to hit at the precise moment they need to happen nor is filling in those blanks. Their bandmate, Howard Parker, (who also contributed a beautiful instrumental on the album) was invaluable in helping to arrange these songs.

The album tells the story of a woman who’s had bad luck with love. She decides to take one more chance when she meets a stranger in a bar. The album chronicles her new relationship going from good to bad and then to the absolute worst. A nasty break up followed by a murder and its aftermath.

I gave you a taste of the album yesterday with their first track, Nothing Left to Lose, opening up with the protaganist feeling as if she has nothing left to lose so takes one last chance at finding happiness. Michelle's lead vocals were the perfect catalyst for the story.

As the story continues with Before I Met You, as a listener you're thinking she may have found footing. While that could be true, we get this from a man's perspective. While Jason's rendition of a classic first recorded by Joe 'Cannonball' Lewis (one of the writers) back in 1953 followed by Carl Smith in 1956 and Charley Pride in 1967 is well done, I think the tune may have been better from Michelle as the woman's perspective.

The first of two interludes, Loren's Lament, was written by Howard Parker. He also takes the lead on the resonator guitar, masterfully evoking the soulful undercurrent of the album.

My earliest memory of a pedal steel guitar, I was six years old and there was a band playing on the back of a flat bed on the main drag of downtown Longmont, CO. I fell instantly in love and very few instruments speak to me more than its cry. As with Loren's Lament, Parker brought the emotion of Here We Are in December to the forefront, making the listener not just feel the story but to become the woman in the song.

Cheater's Waltz, the title track of the album, is the perfect seque from the lamenting of the previous track and flow to the next as well keeping the classic barroom feel.

Michelle comes back in on If You Won't Say It's Over. The lyrics give us more of an insight to the woman's plight and maybe previous relationships... her evolution to this point.

If you want to talk 'classic' country, listen close to Jason as he channels a bit of George Jones on Livin on Barroom Time. As I listened to this track, I had to back up a couple of times to make sure I wasn't hearing The Corvette Song.

Everything I've Got's In Tennessee, brings the woman back to where she started, with the plot twist I was not expecting.

Michelle brings a small church rendition of Leaning On the Everlasting Arms.

That petal steel is the perfect opening for Bourbon and a Broken Heart, pulling on the heartstrings as you cry in your beer or cry in bourbon and branch... either way, you're either going to feel better or like hell when all is said and done.

The mandolin is the star of The Sentence, leaving more questions than answers.

The reprise of Cheater's Waltz on this album is reminiscent of a walk to the gallows.

Between the pure classic country of this album and the notes of southern gospel in Feel Like My Time Ain't Long, CHEATER'S WALTZ hits all the notes of both a great story and a stellar compilation of talent.

CHEATER'S WALTZ releases JUNE 18th!

I'm tipping my hat, with the misstep on track 2.