Amanda Cevallos - Amanda Cevallos  (click on image to watch video)

 18 April 2020

 Amanda Cevallos’ biography introduces the singer/songwriter as a “Latina country music songstress,” but her new eleven-song album presents the listener to one fine traditional country singer – an admirable characteristic completely unrelated to her ethnicity. Yes, she closes the album with “Ready For The Times To Get Better,” which is partly in Spanish, but the rest of these fine songs are sung in English and put to a sonic that will make any old school country heart smile. 

The album opens with the swinging, and lyrically witty, “All My Boyfriends.” The song’s female character comes off especially starved for a good man because she claims it takes all her boyfriends -- added together -- just to make one good man. Cevallos flaunts her maturity again with “Freddy Ain’t Ready,” where she points out how one (and maybe one of her multiple boyfriends) is not quite ready for the prime time of her love. 

It’s refreshing to hear Cevallos sing an acoustic-based country ballad like “Love Me Together.” With a mix including little more than a strummed acoustic guitar, piano, twangy electric guitar and – best of all – steel guitar, Cevallos proves she doesn’t need big rock production – like the many times bombastic variety too often heard on Carrie Underwood recordings – to relay her message. Indeed, many times simpler is simply better. Cevallos has a lovely, natural singing voice, which perfectly fits the song’s sparse arrangement. Both “All My Boyfriends” and “Goodbye Truth” exemplify how Cevallos is also extremely comfortable sounding in more up-tempo settings. 

It’s easy, from a marketing standpoint, to see why Amanda Cevallos highlights her Latin ethnicity. After all, there aren’t too many mainstream female country artists of color. This is especially sad because there is a long and rich history of wonderful Tex-Mex music, which wonderfully combines Mexican and American musical styles into one irresistible combination. It’s nearly criminal the way mainstream country puts on a stereotypical face of white Southern-ness and almost completely ignores its rich Latin heritage. With that said, though, the highly traditional music Cevallos creates, will likely mostly appeal to Americana folk that already have a more varied palate when it comes to embracing sounds even a little bit outside the dull, mostly white country mainstream. 

Whether Cevallos breaks through to the mainstream, or continues to develop a more modest following, her music is true treat to the ears

Dan MacIntosh - Dan MacIntosh has been a professional music journalist for 30 years and his work has regularly appeared in many local and national publications, including Inland Empire Weekly, CCM, CMJ, Paste, Mean Street, Chord, HM, Christian Retailing, Amplifier, Inspirational Giftware, Stereo Subversion, Indie-Music, Soul–Audio, Roughstock.com, Country Standard Time and Spin.com. 

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