ROCK, COUNTRY & OLD TIMEY

Tony Peyser
Mirror contributing writer

   Missed Me By A Mile. This title caught my eye immediately as it’s a phrase I used as a kid which implied youthful invulnerability. To hear it from an adult has a sarcastic, retro snap to it. The singer is Jann Browne and if Sheryl Crow and Lucinda Williams had a child, this is what she’d sound like. I don’t recall the last time I heard an album where virtually every song grabbed me. I suspected the opening track, “Can’t Build A Better Love,” might be good because Browne wrote it with Duane Jarvis whose new CD —- Certified Miracle —- I was wild about. Well, my hunch was right, as it is a mighty strong song.
   The same applies to “Cold Here In London” which is definitely in the Crow mold. Browne further struts her stuff in the title track, as does her back-up band, the Dangerous Neighbors. This is one album where, from top to bottom, they do it all right.
   In unrelated news, the TV networks are threatening to bring back Westerns and the Eastern Seaboard attacks have understandably put America with a capital “A” front and center on the national landscape. This is good news for traditional country guys like Kevin Banford. On his new CD, he wears a black hat but is clearly one of the good guys. Banford’s album is the endearingly titled King Of The Thrift Store Cowboys. His back-up band, The Bakersfield Boys, is a dead giveaway as to what kind of music to expect. Yeah, it’s Buck and Merle time, but there’s also a feel here like Dwight Yoakam. His guitar twangs plenty in the romantic “Good Enough For Me,” the patriotic “Guitars, Guns, God & Girls” and the pugilistic “Katie Bar The Door.” On the back of the CD is a photo of Banford holding his guitar and standing tall with red, white and blue bunting behind him. He looks like something out of a John Ford movie which makes him the right man for right now.
   While channel-surfing, I caught most of a documentary on a famous Sixties songwriter who got screwed by his publisher on his biggest hit, lost out on a fortune, hit the bottle, struggled for years and died with 38 cents in his pocket. Good guess but it wasn’t VH-1’s Behind The Music. It was a PBS special on Stephen Foster, who passed away in the 1860s. The renowned composer made little more than chump change from his landmark American tune, “Oh Susanna.”
   This broadcast came to mind when I was sent Blue Horse, the debut CD by The Be Good Tanyas who specialize in “O Brother Where Art Thou?” kind of music. This sweet-singing, three-woman trio delivers arresting covers of chestnuts like “Oh Susanna” and “Lakes Of Pontchartrain” and memorable original tunes such as “Only In The Past” and “Light Enough To Travel.”
   The Vancouver-based Be Good Tanyas (cool name, eh?) prove that there’s lots of new life in them thar old songs.
   At www.milesofmusic.com, you can get Missed Me By A Mile for $14 and King Of The Thrift Store Cowboys for $12 CDNow has Blue Horse for $16.97.
   *Alt-country practitioner Scott Miller will be at Fais Do Do on November 14th. And the jazzy, classic rock sounds of Moe Jones will be heard at The Beverly Center Hard Rock Café on November 15th when they open for Celtic rockers, Seven Nations.
   The Goofy Band Name Of The Week is … Knuckle Dragger.