Various Artists – A Songwriter’s Tribute To George Strait
The rap on George Strait is that he’s been making the same album for 25 years, even down to the sequencing of the songs. The cagey Texan isn’t likely to mess with a sure thing, so he picks songs that fit his hitmaking template and sends another deposit into his pension fund. The good news is, the songwriters who do the hard work also get checks, big ones.
This disc puts you in Strait’s pickup as he listens to the best-produced demos in town. The performances are less polished, with the raw passion that comes from someone trying to sell a song rather than own it. In a lot of ways, this is a better album than the usual Strait shot.
On “Blame It On Mexico”, from 1981’s Strait Country, writer Darrell Staedtler sounds a bit like Billy Joe Shaver, alternating somber verses with upbeat choruses. Sonny Throckmorton captures the aura of the prairie in “The Cowboy Rides Away”, with a plaintive accordion underscoring the heartbreaking dread in his vocals. Gretchen Peters sounds eerily like Alison Krauss on her gorgeous tune “The Chill Of An Early Fall”.
You can see what caught Strait’s ear for honky-tonkers in Mack Vickery’s “The Fireman” and Whitey Shafer’s double-shot of “Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind” and “All My Ex’s Live in Texas”. But you have to wonder what compelled him to take on Steve Dorff’s spare fiddle and piano ballad “I Cross My Heart”, which barely rises above banal even in the writer’s own hands.