Track Listing

1. Even If It's Wrong
2. Cherokee Boogie
3. Honk Tonk Song
4. Lifetime To Prove
5. Little Ramona (Gone Hillbilly Nuts)
6. Crazy Arms
7. I Ain't Never
8. Chain Of This Town
9. Are You Getting Tired Of Me
10. Hickory Wind
11. One Long Saturday Night

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #130857 in Music
• Released on: 1996-09-16
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
BR5-49's first full-length disc isn't a bad album, but it offers nothing that hasn't been done earlier and better by nouveau honky-tonk and rockabilly bands in Boston, Austin, LA, Washington and Baltimore. Gary Bennett and Chuck Mead, BR5-49's two singing/songwriting guitarists, mix six originals with old songs by the likes of Webb Pierce, Mel Tillis, Ray Price, Moon Mullican and Gram Parsons. BR5-49 perform with the enthusiasm and competence of the seasoned bar band it is, but neither Bennett nor Mead is a special singer or picker and the rhythm section lumbers along without distinction. One suspects that BR5-49 were signed because they showcased regularly on Lower Broadway in Nashville, where country-music executives who don't get out much thought they were seeing something unprecedented. --Geoffrey Himes

Customer Reviews

Great CD
Modern Hillbilly, Rockabilly, Western Swing does not get any better than this. Buy it. It IS Great.

NO WAY YOU'LL BE GETTING TIRED OF ME
Having heard a number of their chart hits I was lured into to giving earplay to some of their work.

BR5-49 comprise Gary Bennet and/ or Chuck Mead (on lead vocals), Don Herron (guitar), Smilin' Jay McDowell (upright bass) and Hawk Shaw Wilson (drums). The band are in a kinda' self-styled time-warp ... operating in a groovy/ funky 1950's niche while at the same time remaining very fresh! First impressions are that they are a very slick outfit (and I'm not just referring to the bands penchant for dessing in snappy suits and wearing greased hair!) and look destined to achieve quite a following.

From the above it will come as no surprise that the cover of BR5-49s self-titled albumn sports an authentic US telephone straight out of the fifties. This will surely ring a bell with the older generation. Those of you who are familiar with three hits that catapulted the group to fame -'Cherokee Boogie', 'Honky Tonk Song' and 'Little Ramona' will be glad to learn that the rest of the albumn promises much of the same. However, there are moments when the thought provoking lyrics can be a touch whimsical.

For me the outstanding track is 'Lifetime To Prove', a song rueing a life of missed opportunities and culminating in the line 'I've got one foot in the door ... I just want one more'. 'Little Ramona' is another favourite which relates how a girls passion for punk complete with 'a mowhawk hairdo' has now turned to country music ... is it any wonder shes 'gone hillbilly nuts!' Other stong lyrical numbers include the first track, with the line 'Sometimes you've gotta do something even if it's wrong'; the bouncy but clever lyrical ogle at some cute-looking country girl in 'I Ain't Never', and the bitter-sweet analogy of falling outta love to the changing of a season in 'Are You Gettin' Tired Of Me' - on the stength of this offering no way!