Hands Up!
(Yep Roc Records)
Website: www.twodollarpistols.net
North Carolina’s Two Dollar Pistols deal exclusively in authentic, Bakersfield-bred, twangy honky tonk roots music. Their version of rollicking hardwood floor-filling seein’-double-you weepers and shuffles is classically built using the established old school formula of fancy guitar pickin’, hearty basslines, swing-inflected drums and soaring steel guitar. The outstanding baritone vocals of John Howie Jr. are a wonderfully pleasing cross between X’s John Doe and country music legend Ernest Tubb and it really doesn’t get any better than that. The typical backside of life topics are all broached lyrically-guy meets girl in bar, guy spends best night of his life with girl, girl eventually leaves, guy writes sad song about the whole damn event. The album was recorded at the same studio (Rick Miller’s Kudzu Ranch Studios) that Southern Culture On The Skids use to create similar magic giving “Hands Up!” a distinctive southern stank. Y’all get some.
MONk 2009 View - This album and a few others by this hot combo still retain places of high esteem in the MONk archives. There is defo something about the righteous twang that gets me a huh-huh hankering for more and even more of their fine git down delicacies. They release albs rather sporadically and whenever I come across their cds in some dusty used product bin I make sure I grab them. John Howie Jr.'s deep warble is of the classic kind that speaks of a grown man's emotions spoken with a vulnerability that is often lost in today's country music. Hell, it hardly even exists so who am I kidding here. There are a lot of contemporary country cats that could learn a dirty lesson or two from the hard scrabble roots tone these guys lay down but if'n you like the current crop of hat acts and trimmed beardo ladies' men that pass for country music singers these days then I don't wanna know you. You know who you are and you need to keep moving. Or jump on this freight train of goodness and toss those cute'n'cuddly boys out the back screen door into the hog shit where they belong! Git to it!
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