Album Notes

LIVING IN YOUR WORLD

Troy Olsen's debut CD, "Living' in Your World" on Honky-tonk Hacienda Records, carries a quality and sincerity rarely found in country music today. This collection of 10 original songs is a testament to Olsen's refreshing approach to traditional country music and his pure brand of songwriting.
The album presents a range of country styles from up-tempo rockers to classic country shuffles, to slow heartbreakers carried by the bitter-sweet cries of steel guitar. It's a satisfying variety held together by the strength of Olsen's vocals. In terms of its sheer presence, Olsen's part-baritone, part-alto recalls the robust voices of Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard, but stands with a resonance all it's own.
It was Olsen's classic country voice that originally attracted co-producer James Intveld to the project. Intveld, a fixture in the L.A. roots rock, rockabilly and country music scenes for some 20 years, produced the album along with guitarist Michael Turner. To Intveld, the record stands out for its purity -- for the fact that it wasn't made with the sort of studio "treatment" applied to so many recordings these days. He says the authentic approach to arranging, recording and producing, gave Olsen's songs a true country sound. "I just think he's very fortunate," Intveld says of Olsen. "He gets to come out with a record, but he doesn't' really have any compromises. We didn't really do anything to it, but just let the thing breathe and let it go. And I just think it's a timeless sounding record. Because we just used very natural sounds."
Natural sounds, and great players. The album features the classic pedal steel playing of Jay Dee Maness (who has recorded and toured with such great artists as Buck Owens, Gram Parsons and Vince Gill), the fiddle of Scott Joss and keyboards of Skip Edwards (both longtime members of Dwight Yoakam's band). Intveld and Turner add to fill the album with outstanding guitar work, as does Olsen.
The songs on "Livin In Your World" are the result of a pledge Olsen made at the beginning of 2001 to produce an album of freshly-written tunes. He teamed up with several proven songwriters from his Arizona home, Southern California and Texas. Co-writers include John Coinman who has written songs with James Intveld and has several songwriting credits for big-budget movies, and southern-California roots rockers Billy Bacon, Chris Gaffney, and Texas guitarist Teddy Morgan.
Overall, the album is an effort that continues the strong tradition of the Bakersfield sound, recalling the influence of mavericks like Winn Stewart, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard without becoming retro-stalgic in any sense. It is clear that Olsen is keeping his influences in the proper place. His style tips its hat to tradition but moves quickly to the future with a personal voice all its own. "I just want to do something that's fresh in the sense of what's going on in the radio today," Olsen explains, "To incorporate what I love about the last 30 years of country music, and try to make it fit in terms of making something that's fresh right now."