Honky-Tonk Man (Remastered) Steve Young

• 1Honky-Tonk Man02:22
• 2Brain Cloudy Blues04:26
• 3Rock Salt & Nails03:55
• 4Rockin' Chair Money02:35
• 5Ramblin' Man03:43
• 6The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down05:14
• 7Traveling Kind03:01
• 8Sally Goodin'02:12
• 9Alabama Highway04:54
• 10Vision Of A Child03:28
• 11We've Been Together On This Earth Before03:12
• 12The White Trash Song03:49
• Total Runtime42:51

Info for Honky-Tonk Man (Remastered)

Songwriter and folk/country artist Steve Young covers The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" on his acoustic critics-acclaimed 1975 album Honky Tonk Man.

"1975 marked the return to the recording scene for Steve Young. Honky Tonk Man, released on Wisconsin's tiny Mountain Railroad Records, was his first recording since Seven Bridges Road in 1971 (which had been reissued in 1973). This is the most straight-up country record Young ever cut. He handles both lead and rhythm guitar chores with a band of fine session players, including Kamau Gravatt, who did double duty with Weather Report. Other than redos of Utah Phillips' "Rock, Salt & Nails" and his own "White Trash Song," Young sticks somewhat close to the canon of classic country with a few surprises -- at least on side one; side two is mostly his own material. The deep blues read of Bob Wills' "Brain Cloudy Blues" is radical and as far from Western swing as it gets, but it also showcases Wills' own roots in the blues. The title cut is a version of the Johnny Horton classic with swinging fiddles by Craig Ruble and Cal Hand's warbling pedal steel kept in line by Bill Petersen's electric bass. Young's vocal is a reedy baritone that gets to the heart of matter -- that this is a drinking playboy's anthem. Side one eclipses with a high, lonesome take on Hank Williams' "Ramblin' Man" that is as cur-dog low as it is restless and a cover of Robbie Robertson's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." Young's version is pastoral and slow; it's as mournful as a funeral song and comes across as a folk elegy for the Deep South at the end of the Civil War. Side two is marked by Young's own stunner, "We've Been Together on This Earth Before," "Vision of a Child," and two live cuts done with Doc Watson of the traditional "Sally Goodin'" and the spooky country of "Travelin' Kind." Like Seven Bridges Road, Honky Tonk Man is a fine outing from Young, though it is hampered a bit by somewhat shoddy recording. But the material and his performance of it are top-notch." (Thom Jurek, AMG)

Steve Young, guitar, vocals
Bill Peterson, bass
Eric Gravatt, drums & vocals
Cal Hand, steel guitar, dobro, vocals
Mark Henley, harmonica
Stephen Powers, vocals
Betsy Kaske, vocals

Digitally remastered

Steve Young
Singer/songwriter/instrumentalist Steve Young (1942-2016) was a pioneer of "country rock" and of "outlaw country," two movements that transformed mainstream country music and impacted other genres of American popular music. Several generations of artists--country music's new traditionalists during the 1980s, alternative country acts in the 1990s, as well as those associated with Americana music in the current century--broadened their audiences by merging country music with elements of other music genres. All those musicians have been indebted to Young and such contemporaries as Gram Parsons and Gene Clark, who collectively demonstrated how to integrate country music with other music genres (rock, pop, folk, blues, R&B, bluegrass, and gospel). Young, a Southerner, recorded more than a dozen distinctive albums, but none was more fully realized than his 1975 album Honky-Tonk Man. Recorded at the acclaimed Minneapolis studio Sound 80 and released by Mountain Railroad Records, a small independent label based in the Upper Midwest, Honky-Tonk Man documented the musical world of a complex if largely misunderstood artist during the peak of his powers. Featuring originals and covers of Bob Wills, Hank Williams, The Band, and more, Honky-Tonk Man explores the origins of Country Rock, Outlaw Country, and Americana. Experience it in its original form.

Booklet for Honky-Tonk Man (Remastered)