Available at gigs and at www.grahamparker.net,
Yer Cowboy Boot is part of
Graham Parker's limited-edition series of "official bootleg" releases of live recordings from his own Up Yours Records label. In this case,
Parker is heard at a show that occurred in May 2004 when he was promoting his
Your Country studio album. Accompanied by the trio of multi-instrumentalists
Tom Freund and
Drew Glackin and drummer
Konrad Meissner (whom he has dubbed
the Twang Three),
Parker, in addition to performing many of the songs from
Your Country, also takes the opportunity of the group's versatility to try out a number of songs from his extensive record catalog that he has rarely if ever performed live. These include such album tracks as "I Don't Know," "You've Got to Be Kidding," and "Crying for Attention," plus "Three Martini Lunch," a song first introduced on
Live! Alone in America, but never performed in a band arrangement before. With such instruments as lap steel and mandolin in the mix, there is occasionally a country feel to the music, but
the Twang Three are equally adept at making a sound that approximates a smaller version of
Parker's old five-piece backup band
the Rumour. The remarkable consistency of the singer's writing talent means that he could pick virtually any 19 songs from his repertoire and make a good live album out of them, and that is demonstrated in this set, which eschews most of his better-known material and hits a peak with the recently composed "Nation of Shopkeepers."