Westley Dennis - Then And One More Day (click on image to watch video)

 16  June 2021

Wesley Dennis makes my kind of Country music. Not of that backwards-hat bro-tastic  songs about cold beer, tequila, beer and sunshine crap. The Alabama native’s sound harkens back to Honky-Tonk antecedents like George Jones, Faron Young, Jim Reeves, Ray Price, Conway Twitty and Hank Thompson and Porter Waggoner.

            His new album hopscotches through a clutch of classic Country flavors, from the weepy lamentation of “(I’m So) Afraid Of Losing You Again,” to the Roadhouse Rock of “Halo And Horns,” the twang two-step of “Who’s Gonna Take You When You Go” and the wistful “Alabama Dreams.”

            Wesley displays a razor-sharp wit on “All My Friends Are Behind Bars.” Rambling guitars are bookended  by wily bass and a tick-tock beat. The opening verse paints a vivid portrait of a man in crisis; “Since she left, it’s so  hard to find someone to help me through in this hard time, plus everyone I know is in jail/Brian punched some guy in the nose for doing a rocked-out version of a George Jones song, the guy knew the judge and now the judge won’t grant him bail.” It only lets get better from there.

            He also puts his stank on a couple of hits by the late-great Keith Whitley, “Where Are All The Girls I Used To Cheat With” and “Birmingham Turnaround. Plus he acquits himself nicely on John Berry’s “If I Had Any Pride Left At All.”  The album  closes with a final fiddle-drenched lament entitled “Little Things.”

Eleni P. Austin - I was born into a large, loud Greek family and spent my formative years in the Los Angeles enclaves of Laurel Canyon and Los Feliz. My mother moved us to the Palm Springs area just in time for puberty and Disco.  I have spent over 40 years working in record stores, starting back in High School.

I wrote music reviews for the Desert Sun from 1983 to 1988. I began doing the same for the Coachella Valley Weekly in 2012.

I live in Palm Springs with my wife and our amazing dog, Denver. 

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