Travis Smith & Cabin Fever
If It Weren't for Beer Drinkers
Blue Roan Publishing
By David Pilot
 What this country
needs
Is a few more outlaws
Someone that won't lay down and play the game
We need someone to play our kind of music
Cause those starchy Nashville songs all sound the same
And there's way too many George Strait wannabes
But none of them are willin' to pay the fees
Take away their steel guitar and their symphony
And all you got left is corporate harmony
Give me some outlaws
If Travis Smith was a Baptist preacher, this'd be the sermon
of the month twelve times a year. Lines like these backed up
with references to artists from Robert Earl Keen to Billy Joe
Shaver who've done it their way and won out carry a weight that
Charlie Robison was aiming for but didn't capture when he went
after Pat Green a coupla years back. And a telling difference
between Smith's approach and the angle so many of the Ballcap
Nation's poster boys are taking nowadays shows up in the spoken
lines that close out the track; Smith admits that Nashville's
got its fill of talented people. That's a truth too many south
of the Red don't want to admit these days, but the truth is it's
the suits up there to blame. The songwriters in Music City are
as good as they've ever been, but they're stuck playing rounds
in the same little halls and coffeehouses and back rooms that
our heroes here in the Lone Star State are scrapping to gig every
chance they get. Some of ours are just as talented, some aren't,
and that makes it the music business. Smith is staking his claim
in the former group, dealing his stone country vocals on a lyric
hand that's no bluff in anybody's game. Take the track here
about the all-around cowboy at the rodeo in 1985, the guy who
got his share of the spotlight and is hanging onto it like a
prom date seventeen years later just to keep his sanity in some
semblance of order. Those memories of his kids cheering in the
stands are a bedrock he can drive a stake into and hold on.
The rodeo whose memory he treasures? In a twist along the lines
of the one Max Stalling sprung in "The Pila Song,"
our hero here's reliving the Huntsville Prison Rodeo. Those
few golden moments when a good man who done bad gets to be a
man again. If Merle was from Beaumont he might've written this
one.
The same introspective approach wends throughout If It
Weren't For Beer Drinkers. Sometimes taking on an outside
personality, sometimes turned inward with searingly succinct
clarity, Smith's is a writing style that belies the supposed
drunken frivolity of the record's title.
I'll play some old song and think of you
Even though I never played when you were around
I wonder why old memories are closer than yesterday
I wonder why hearts sometimes come unwound
There are the de rigeur good time tunes not even bothering
to skirt the edges of cliché ("How Can I Miss Her
[If She Won't Ever Leave]"), and the mid-tempo boot scooters
that keep the roadhouses pouring cold ones (the title track)
that a country fan demands, but they all come across with a sincerity
and a confidence in the delivery that makes even the run of the
mill cuts sound relevant.
Ultimately If It Weren't For Beer Drinkers is as much
a snapshot of growing up in small town Texas as it is a mantra
for the continuing evolution of country music. The snapshots
of young love and middle-aged memories are vivid ("True
Love by Midnight"), and there's even a look at how the world
changed for a boy who hit 18 in '65. It's not Springsteen singing
"The River," but it's in the same vein and it shows
promise. History buffs who treasure the Mark David Manders story
songs will bite hard on "The Big Country." And country
music fans in general are bound to feel like they've found a
long lost friend. It's a short step from here to the town of
Thalia, and it's no stretch to picture McMurtry's protagonist
Duane Moore living through these songs as his old friend Sonny
watches movies in the sky above the broken down picture show.
Travis Smith and Cabin Fever right this minute are the definition
of a local band trying to put the pieces together. What they're
recording, though, ranks with the better-known names across the
state of Texas today even if nobody's ever heard it. They've
got the sound and the direction down pat. Visit http://cabinfeverband.home.att.net/ to find
out just how few have found this well. Hit the Songs and Lyrics
link to listen in via RealPlayer and find out just how fresh
a hidden spring's water can be. Then you can say you found 'em
first.
Contact David Pilot at: tailgunner-at-rockzilla.net
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