From the album title and the cover, which depicts a hearse picking up a pedal steel guitar at a crosswalk on 16th Avenue South in Nashville, you might assume this is a country comedy album. But singer/songwriter Larry Cordle and his cohorts in Lonesome Standard Time are deadly serious when they get around to performing the title song at the end of the record, lamenting a country music scene in which "The almighty dollar, and the lust for worldwide fame/Slowly killed tradition." "Old Hank wouldn't have a chance on today's radio," the song notes, and that's probably also true for this aggregation, which is a traditional bluegrass outfit of lead guitar, rhythm guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and "doghouse" bass, with three-part harmonies. Cordle's songs examine familiar country themes, from love to drinking and religion, and he gives over a couple of instrumentals to pure picking. A successful country songwriter, Cordle is not quite as traditional as he claims, but on this independent label release he can pose as the last of the great real country artists, even as the people who he claims murdered country music record his songs and pay his rent.
© William Ruhlmann /TiVo