The sound of Tiny Town is raucous roots-rock, which shouldn’t surprise anyone, since the four players who populate this little village come from parts of the musical map that are ripe with roots.
Singer/guitarist Tommy Malone and bassist Johnny Ray Allen were members of the Subdudes, a New Orleans group transplanted to Colorado. Kenny Blevins was the drummer for Sonny Landreth’s Goners, Louisiana blues-rockers who were the best backing band John Hiatt ever had (never mind that overhyped group with Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner). And Nashville-based singer-songwriter Pat McLaughlin has several gems of Southern-soul albums and a stack of critical praise to his credit.
So Tiny Town is a dream roots-rock supergroup (can it be a supergroup if the members aren’t superstars?). This self-titled debut mostly delivers on the promise of its members’ pasts, but it doesn’t quite supplant the collective resume.
The playing’s not at fault; most of the disc rocks with the kind of rowdy authority that both the Subdudes’ and McLaughlin’s recordings needed more of (Blevins’ slamming helps). Throughout, McLaughlin and Malone’s fine singing are almost seamless, and it’s fun to hear them swapping breathless verses on tracks such as “Don’t Let Time Run Out”.
But some of the songs bog down in shoot-from-the-lip social commentary, such as the title track’s “The houses on the rich side look like the houses on the poor/Except that the really big ones only got windows, but no doors.” Huh? As a group, these guys know how to write good lyrics; it’s a shame that some of these feel so tossed-off compared to the music. Still, that rootsy, rocking sound is enough reason to keep visiting Tiny Town again and again.