|
Press Reviews Country Music News Review for ' Looking For A Good Time ' [+ Show] Country Music News Nudie and the Turks Looking For A Good Time Indie - SR-002 Produced by: Nudie Sometimes the most interesting and enjoyable albums in Cancountry come from unlikely sources. Who would have thought that a threesome called Nudie and the Turks, from 'smalltown' Prince Edward Island, would put together an albun that would hold it's own against all the big budget, big star, big hype albums that come along. For sure you won't hear much of Nudie and the Turks on mainstreem country radio...but country music fans would certainly be well served if some of our Music Directors and Radio Programers would step up to the plate and take a swing at this piece of magic. ( Since that's not likely gonna' happen...best you give Nudie an email and buy yourself a copy...it'll be one of your 'best buys' of the year ). The album id filled with original songs written by Nudie and they range from sorrowful country ballads to mid-tempo jumpers, to story songs - all different, all very well performed. You get a bit of Johnny Cash in the prison lament 'Four Gray Walls', some old-time Jimmie Rodgers styled music in 'Billy Dean's Blues', a slow bluesy country ditty, 'Why Don't You Love Me For Who i Am?', and a knockout country tear-jerker in 'Dear Departed'. Listen Also for a couple more winners in the two-stepping 'Call Me' and the mid-tempo, 'Maybe Someday'. The album also carries three instrumental pieces, including versions of the classics 'Cannonball Rag' and 'Lone Star Rag', as well as an original in 'Pop The Trunk' which smacks of the great instrumentals we heard from Buck Owens & the Buckaroos. The album also contains Nudie's story song tribute to the late handsome Ned ( aka Robyn Masyk who died of a drug overdose in Toronto, January 10, 1987 ). Handsome Ned was a musical folk hero of sorts before his untimely demise, and Nudie tells yet another chapter in Canadian music history with his song 'Who Was Handsome Ned? This is not a big studio production project - you get Nudie on vocals and guitar, some tasty mandolin and fiddle by Gordie MacKeeman, Thomas Webb on pedal steel and Mark Geddes on bass - but it is exactly that simplicity that makes this whole album work to perfection. Country Music News - August 2008 Guardian review for ' Looking For A Good Time ' [+ Show] Doug Gallant - The Guardian Going back in time with Nudie, Turks Growing up with a mother who loved classic country music I was exposed from an early age to the music of artists like Jim Reeves, Ray Price, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Marty Robbins and a host of other country music legends. For the longest time, I thought that music had disappeared from the country vocabulary. It certainly wasn’t being played much on radio. Then, one fateful Sunday three years ago I entered the flea market at the Charlottetown Mall and discovered Nudie and the Turks playing live just inside the doorway. They floored me. Three years and two albums later the result is still the same. When I listen to Looking For A Good Time, the band’s second album, I’m transported back in time to my mother’s bedroom where I spent many happy hours immersed in the country records she carefully placed on the family stereo while she puffed her way through a deck of Peter Jacksons and sipped on a Pepsi. The brand of country served up by Nudie, fiddler/mandolin player Gordie Mackeeman, guitarist/pedal steel player Thomas Webb and bass player Mark Geddes harkens back to what many call country music’s golden era, the mid-40s to the mid-60s. The flavour, the lyrics, the vocals and the harmonies, the arrangements and the orchestrations of Nudie and the Turks really take you back there. And they do it so well, you start wondering where you heard these songs before and who recorded them first. But the fact of the matter is that almost all of the material on Looking For a Good Time is original, either written or co-written by Nudie. The only exceptions are two traditional rags, Cannonball Rag and Lone Star Rag, both of which showcase well the band’s musicianship. There are some real little gems on this set, which was recorded and mixed in Charlottetown with Nudie serving as his own producer. Choice offerings include Dear Departed, Why Don’t You Love Me For Who I Am, Pop The Trunk, Party of the Year and the title cut Looking for a Good Time. Doug Gallant - August 2008 |