By Ken Paulson
Tonight the Waymores, a trio of talented songwriters, will showcase their new album at a CD release party at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. We had the chance to preview the album a while back and loved it. Here’s our review:
If you’re 16, starting a band means finding rehearsal space in someone’s garage, convincing someone to play the bass and struggling to write your own material.
But what if that band comes along three decades later, after you and your friends have written songs for people like Johnny Cash, Trisha Yearwood, Kathy Mattea and Joe Cocker, and after you’re proven to be an adept solo performer?
That’s how you form the Waymores, a highly entertaining trio with an overflowing song catalog and a new self-titled album.
The Waymores include Don Henry, a Grammy Award-winning songwriter and very funny performer, Sally Barris, a fine songwriter and soprano, and Tom Kimmel, an accomplished singer-songwriter and poet. That firepower pays off on The Waymores.
The album is being readied for official release, but it’s available at shows and is already one of our favorites of 2012. The material is first-rate, the harmonies are solid and the fun quotient is off the chart.
Some highlights:
-“Way More” is sort of the “Monkees Theme” for the band, a plea to a woman to abandon the bum she’s seeing, while also explaining the group’s name.
-“Singing Like A Byrd” joyously salutes Roger McGuinn and a bygone era when the world was “ringing like a Rickenbacker.” Just beautiful.
-Al Kinds of Kinds, written by Henry with Phillip Coleman, is also the leadoff track on Miranda Lambert’s new album. It’s a heartening celebration of diversity, told through a cross-dressing congressman, a self-dosing pharmacist and similarly colorful characters.
-“Can You See Me Now,” a song by Kimmel and Amelia White, is a touching song about realigning with others after an absence.
-Barris’ “Bright New World” closes the album on a sweet and optimistic note, segueing to a gentle cover of the Beatles’ “P.S. I Love You.”
Record stores – to the extent they’re still out there – should be advised to file this in two locations: “Americana Music” and “Unlike Anything Else in This Store.” Highly recommended.
Follow Sun209: Americana Music News on Twitter at @sun209.com.