Bill Madison - Sunday Mornin' Hayride (2009)

The Acid Archive Review:
“Here’s a rural singer-songwriter album which deserves more exposure. While there’s nothing deeply original about it, Madison displays class and ability across the board; he can sing, he can play guitar, he can write good songs, and he can arrange them. At its best Sunday Mornin’ Hayride sounds like Michigan’s Drendall-Thrower axis in top form, painting a similarly broad, fully realized canvas of prairie Americana and good-hearted drifters. Side 1 impresses with strong melodies and a rich palette of moods, from the upbeat “Sunshine Cowboy” to the dark, ugly past of the trad number “Buffalo Skinners”. Accompanied by a low-key but adept band of stringpickers, Madison displays a broad understanding of pre-electric roots music, integrating folk, blues, country and mountain elements into a consistant wholet that doesn’t belong to one genre, and sounds entirely modern (for the 1970’s). Millard-Dyce spring to mind, perhaps via a shared love for Tim Hardin’s rootsier side. I’m not as enthused by the jug band, pure blues and light jazz tracks on side 2, although their precense is defendable, and Madison breaks them up with the rather wonderful “Penance”. With a second half as strong as the first, Sunday Mornin’ Hayride would have been a genre classic, and it’s still invigorating enough to be checked out by any fan of local 70’s music. Patrick Lundborg
The Acid Archives