This new one by the Austin heroine is dominated by songs of loss, dedicated to the late fiddler and local legend Champ Hood, who’d regularly joined Price in her celebrated Tuesday happy-hour Continental Club shows. The song titles — whether jazz, twang, blues or Texas swing that lies between — roll out as if we were in for dirges: “Sad As It Seems”, “Not Coming Home”, “Nothing But Heartache”, “One Of These Lonely Days”, “Black And Blue Heart”.
All that loss shows up in the tracks; this disc does make for some good, quiet-mood, after-hours listening for one of those nights, but not for being sober. Price and her ace backup bring adult resilience and smart good humor to the tunes, which come off knowingly sad, down but not out.
She sings winningly as someone to whom these blues are not shocks, but part of life. When she intones Mel Torme’s line from the title cut — “I’d like to laugh, but nothing strikes me funny” — you know she’s laughed some other time; it lingers.
The great James Burton adds tasty licks throughout on acoustic guitar and dobro, on cuts jazzier and twangier; the Price-Burton vocal-dobro pairing on “Tennessee Whiskey” is a must-hear. Rich Brotherton and Casper Rawls add nearly as much acoustic string flair themselves.
Price doesn’t necessarily arrive gifted with the richest natural voice going today. But she makes the most of what she’s got, and that’s plenty.