Album Notes

You can point out the tension between words and music, or blabber about nuances within the rough expression of sadness, love, melancholy and hope. Or describe how live shows always include a cheerful wry conversation with the audience. But, dang...Dang!! Who are these guys?

Who? Hoodang, that's who. Where? Into The 'Dang. Deep, deep in country. Things are different there. Different.
What? Smooth on the outside and gritty on the inside, with a steady simmering energy. As Americana as apple pie that's been flavored with love potions and laced with ingredients for darker things. Time travelers, comfortably and gracefully inhabiting the sound of an era that had a few instruments and needed to express passion without any need to make it fancy.

Take a ride. The dog named Elvis has his head out the window, and has become one with the breeze. As for you, you're busy realizing you're sitting between Hank Williams and Roger Miller. And that troubled-lookin' hitchhiker in back; what's-his-name? Steve? You're hearing a chat that becomes sly, blunt or heartbreaking before you even notice. Too late.

And then, without changing, futile desperation moves from urgent to humdrum, and Friday is no different than Monday. Weary bluster emerges in the form of a bad-natured and thinly-disguised request for a mercy killing. A metaphor appears with something for everyone; "I'm needy, but all I need is a good time."

Step through a waltz that comes from a place way sadder than Tennessee, where love went wrong, or just went. Hear a celebratory, understated and underspoken love song, more told in what's left out. Join in some good-natured funnin'. Or is it savage socio-political commentary with spot-on footnotes on steel and pi-yanner?

Slip into a casual, yet elegiac, remembrance of a quondam friend, and an understated wish for a kinder, gentler world, in which murder wouldn't be necessary. No remorse; regrets only. The perfect song to inspire a movie from the Coen brothers. "Hollywood on line two for Mr. Dang..." Acronyms, anyone? Punned it, indeed.

A weary plea for sanity, prophetically written months before Commander Uncle Daddy opened a can of the family brand of whup-ass. There was a frat boy, had a dog, and Jingo was his name-o. Elvis has left the doghouse. Despair, disgust and hope. Can't you hear me callin' you?

Then one day, redemption comes home. Life surprises itself.At the last stop, search for balance between give and take. Love is tender, love is sweet; never take the cure. Take Hoodang and call somebody in the morning. Pick it up.

- Long-Handle Bob