Big Bob Young - Hard Way to Make a Dollar (2008)

Tracklist

01. Ship of Fools
02. Best of a Bad Situation
03. Somewhere Tonight
04. Hard Way to Make a Dollar
05. Bury Me in Dixie
06. Mississippi Nights
07. Green County Stomp
08. I Call it Love
09. Can I Take You Home
10. Stand Up

Just out last November 18th ”HARD WAY TO MAKE A DOLLAR”, the debut CD of a 53 guy called Robert L.Young, better known as BIG BOB YOUNG.
He was born in St.Louis, but raised first in Arkansas, then in Chicago; he has done so many jobs ranging from mechanic and clown to country bandleader and farrier, while being around the world as a soldier in the Air Force and touring in Iraq and in the National Guard awarded with a Bronze Star for his bravery.Since his teenage years, Big Bob began writing songs based on blues, gospel, jazz and above all country music which shaped him particularly as a true man of great ethical values. The album runs through ten pleasant tracks, easy listening but a high class product; as the GREEN COUNTRY STOMP suggests with its sonorities, the songs bring back the sounds of an AMERICA that has been able to renew, so easily and passionately, the different expressions of popular music in the HEARTLANDS, in Louisiana and all along the muddy waters of the Great River Road. BIG BOB YOUNG songs are gathered and full of deep feelings, in the middle of the main themes, not only love, but everyday life, the life of the common people which hardly contend with any kind of problem; but above all the he realizes the true meaning of living one’s own life: the care of soul and the spirit, the memories, all the bad and the good ones, which have led him to go around the world, even in areas affected by war. Harmonies ranging over genres, from blues to country, from gospel to old time, with influences of a vaudeville of the past times. Bob’s voice brings back great icons of that lively and passionate Nashville, sometimes resembling that of George Jones and Dave Dudley; the tone colour of his voice is soaked with the sounds gathered from the Mississippi banks. His talk about soul starts getting more serious, culminating in STAND UP, a song about the end of the world, and the judgment day, where he draws on a verse from the Gospel according to Luke, where he urges everybody to be on the lookout, and he says. His church come and claim his bride’. All the musicians who have contributed to the production of the album are real talented professionals: the Bassist STICK DAVIS (ex AMZING RHYTHM ACES bassist), MICHAEL WEBB at the keyboards (who also played with GARY ALLAN,ALLISON MOORER and CHRIS KNIGHT), drummer RICK LONOW (ex POCO drummer), CARLTON MOODY guitarist and mandolinist of the BURRITO DELUXE, and finally another illustrious name, COLIN LINDEN, the highly regarded guitarist and dobro player of BRUCE COCKBURN. Finally, there’s the touching memory of his father, raised in Arkansas and then moved to Chicago for his job, whose darker and bad times of life are told in two songs, “Bury me in Dixie” and “Ship of Fools”. But our good BIG BOB, reaches the top with his sound and his voice with MISSISSIPPI NIGHTS, a song whose minutes are devoted to love, in a tight introspective tensions, so that everyone can be moved by memories: maybe those of the days spent with the lover, with blond hair and crystal blue eyes, when there was time for future promises and for making love on the banks of the river.

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