Stacy's Music Row Report- Stacy Harris' Music & Video Reviews

A little "housekeeping": I welcome the receipt of and will review just about all NEW product received. (Contact me for an explanation if you think there might be extenuating circumstances.) Major or independent label. It makes no difference.

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Garrett Morgan is an independent Americana/country artist and songwriter currently living in Northern California.

A Southwest Texas native, Garrett’s EP showcases both his gritty voice and thoughtful, relationship-inspired lyrics (every one of these songs is a Morgan original).

She Says acquaints listeners with a woman who exudes confidence and seems to have it all together, however…

Our protagonist is clearly enamored of Sugar, perhaps accounting for two renditions (the finale on this handful of songs is an acoustic version of the song), though not in succession. Morgan has some words of comfort and advice for Sirena, who embarks from “the middle of nowhere” via “a bus to California,” still unable to shed her disappointment, while the title song is yet another love song rendered as an introspective metaphor about life at the crossroads.

Nearly eight years after her debut as an E! ”reality” series (Love is in the Heir) star, Princess Ann Claire, the London-born granddaughter of HH Princess Shams of Iran’s Pahlavi dynasty and the late Shah of Iran’s great-niece), professionally drops her royal title, comes to Nashville and trades her crown for a debut album.

As I listened to Honkytonk Princess, all of the above was news to me. The CD’s title was not a tip off, since its only significance to me was that it was the title song of this 12 song collection. Only when I later read the project’s liner notes and played the accompanying, roughly four and one-quarter minute-long “bonus DVD featuring never-before-seen interviews & footage of the making of the record: the road from TV to reality” was I brought up to speed on this “celebrity” whom I thought was another new, unknown artist vying for my attention.

Any project that has Bob Tur’s backing, as this one does according to the liner notes and DVD credits, is worthy of my consideration, but when an artist doesn’t adequately explain the connection, thanks a plastic surgeon by name and acknowledges her “corporate sponsors,” is a reviewer justified in asking if this is just another instance of a carpetbagger (though one who is now a naturalized American citizen), in this case a princess (with all of sense of entitlement that title suggests) expecting Music Row to give her, pardon the expression, the royal treatment?

Again, having heard the CD with none of these prejudicial thoughts to ponder, as a lyric-lover, I was struck by the production that, while creative at times, at others renders some of the lyrics unintelligible. With no lyrics list provided, at times I was picking up on only bits and pieces of what some of these songs are about.

Better Girl is the CD’s first singe and video. It is a good, radio-friendly upbeat choice. Let’s Go To Mexico might initially have eyes rolling- like the world needs another song in the Jimmy Buffett- Kenny Chesney tradition. Yet how can a listener not love the line expressing the wish to “maybe catch a glimpse” of Chesney “without his hat?”

Janie Fricke’s kicks off 2012 reprising her country hits, and those of other artists, bluegrass-style.

While, of late, bluegrass artists have taken an occasional country or pop standard and given it the bluegrass treatment, Janie devotes her entire 13 track CD to the Country Side of Bluegrass.

Fricke fans, be they purists or open to experimentation, will likely appreciate Janie’s reworked versions of You Don’t Know Love, Do Me With Love, He’s A Heartache, She’s Single Again, Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me Baby, Tell Me A Lie , It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Easy, Down To My Last Broken Heart and Fricke’s 1978 hit cover of Hank Locklin’s classic, Please Help Me I’m Falling (In Love With You).

Janie is blessed with the wisdom to know which of her many hits work when adapted bluegrass-style and, as importantly, those that don’t.

Still, this is probably not the album for a listener who is not receptive to evaluating Fricke’s performances of country classics associated with the original artists, let alone Janie’s bluegrass rendering of Faithless Love and Ring of Fire.

The latter, billed as a “bonus track,” loses a little zip without the horns one associates with Johnny Cash’s hit recording. But then Fricke understands that horns and bluegrass don’t mix.