DAVE'S DIARY - 13 JULY 2015 - TYLER FARR CD REVIEW
2015 CD REVIEW
TYLER FARR
SUFFER IN PEACE ( COLUMBIA ).
HOW FAR FOR TYLER
“We come from Eastabuchie Booger Hooker Possum Knuckle Bug and Grinder's Switch/ we hoop and holler when old Charlie Daniels calls that devil son of a bitch/ yeah we plough it, nail it, bail it, then hightail it to town/ we spend our payday on them ladies and them long necked rounds/ we gonna live out past the limits 'til the day that we die/ we're from the banjo chicken plucking, double clutching C.O.U.N.T.R.Y.” - C.O.U.N.T.R.Y - Chris Tompkins-Craig Wiseman-Rodney Clawson.
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Missouri minstrel Tyler Farr wants to make it clear he's no ornery city slicker trapped in a cloying politically correct prison. Not for him the drive-by shootings, ethnic gangs, terrorist enclaves, traffic jams, parking inspectors, ponce politicians, dress and undress codes and rules and regulations. So what surrogates do we listeners receive as rewards for rejecting follies of the high rise concrete corrals and the ice manufacturers and dealers? Well, it's some of the oldest opiates on offer - booze, down home domestic bliss, religion and pure patriotism. Young Farr, 31, only co-wrote three of the 11 songs here and they're sequenced in the final stanza. He grew up in Garden City, Missouri , attending Missouri State University , studying voice. |
Farr is also a classically trained opera singer and took voice lessons in his teenage years, singing tenor in Missouri's All-State Choir during his high school senior year.
He claims he discovered and fell in love with country music after his mother married George Jones' touring guitarist.
Bur let's not blame mama for the avalanche of drinking songs such as self-explanatory first #1 hit A
Guy Walks Into A Bar that he almost lost to Oklahoma star Blake Shelton .
Farr stumbled upon it when he walked into a bar after a day of listening to demos and one of the co-writers, Jonathan Singleton, was playing an acoustic version at a writers' night.
“I'm at the bar maybe ordering a drink of whiskey,” he revealed, “and he starts singing it and I turn around. I was blown away. Immediately after he was done I went up to him and said, ‘Dude I got to cut that.' It really happened that easily.”
Farr says Voice judge and coach Shelton also put the song on hold and he soon received a call from his producer asking what he should do.
“I said we're going to cut it. I think Blake's alright with hits,” Farr recalled.
“We had documentation that showed I had it on hold first.”
After a show with Jason Aldean the singer said Shelton came backstage raising hell about stealing the song from him.
“I played it for him and he said, ‘Well done man.' And we proceeded to give each other crap for hours on end and that's how we became friends,” Farr says.
WITHDRAWALS – FROM THE REHAB BANK
“You were like whiskey running through my veins/ you were that first sweet taste of Mary Jane/ all alone in the darkness, watching my hands shake/ but they don't have a rehab for heartbreak." - Withdrawals - Josh Kear-Gordie Sampson-Hilary Lindsay
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Guy Walks Into A Bar segues into his latest hit - the clever Withdrawals that rules there is no rehab clinics for love addiction. Farr didn't write the song but psyched himself up to play the character in the video. Tyler retreated to a single room to film it, trapping himself inside a glass box and, eventually, submerging himself in water. It might have been akin to Chinese water torture but the end result is worth it. Directed by Eric Welch, the Withdrawals clip opens with a mega-close-up on Farr's open eye - a metaphorical glimpse into the country boy's soul. |
Or perhaps, the mind left broken after losing a lover.
“It has a lot of flair to it, you can hear the emotion,” Farr explained.
“The song has so much tension and angst. It's like the guy is going through withdrawals over a woman, and there's nothing he can do about it. I've been there and that's why I cut these songs.”
The song was written by Josh Kear, Gordie Sampson and Hillary Lindsey, and colours introspective themes of Suffer in Peace .
"I'm a realist. I think half of the rest of country music's got all the happy sing-song songs covered," Farr revealed of his reality driven music.
"From living life to the fullest, sort of putting yourself out there, getting your heart broken. And I've lived. I mean, I've been through some shit. I put my heart into anything I do, relationships, singing. You have to do that to write great country songs. Not to say I've wrote great country songs, but I sure as hell tried to."
JASON ALDEAN DAMN GOOD FRIENDS
“You're driving back home down 246/ you almost hit a deer and you end up in a ditch/ you can't pull forward and you can't back out/ you're sitting there thinking whatcha gonna do now/ you'd be a little nervous if a cop showed up/ Cause you drank a little maybe just a little too much/ waiting on a tow truck takes too long/ it's two in the morning, who you gonna call/ friends, damn good friends/ Seven minutes later they're pulling you out.” - Damn Good Friends - Brent Anderson-Chris Dubois-Neil Medley.
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Farr played the CMA Music Festival in Nashville and is touring with Georgian star Jason Aldean. So it makes sense to punctuate Withdrawals and the title track with an Aldean duet on Damn Good Friends . “We're both very similar in the sense that we have a lot of the same interests,” Farr said of Aldean. “He's a big outdoorsman just like myself. He doesn't have a lot of friends, but the ones he does have are true friends and that's what the song Damn Good Friends is really about. I heard it and loved it and knew it could be something big.” Farr said Aldean was the first artist he considered as a duet partner. |
“He's shown me the importance of song selection,” Farr explained.
“He knows what his fans want and gives it to them night after night.”
Farr is a master of milking angst on songs he didn't write but is even handed about Bro-Country peers who drown in hedonistic romps on tail-gates outside the city limits.
"I let the fans and people figure out where I fit in to that," Farr says.
"But I think I have my own place in country music and I don't worry about what other people are doing. I just do my thing and they can put me wherever they want me."
RAISED TO PRAY
“I remember stealing pallets just to build us a fire/ out in a field full of whiskey, weeds, and wine/ running on empty but I never got tired/ of keeping Mama up all night and making Daddy want to kick my ass/ sure owe a lot to that old King James/ under the seat with my last name/ on the cover of it should have opened it more/ instead of letting it slide around on the truck floor/ but the devil couldn't catch us ‘cause, hey, at the end of the day/ we were raised to pray.” - Raised To Pray - Lance Miller-Adam Sanders-Brad and Brett Warren.
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But there's salvation looming as the singer resurrects Charlie Daniels devil and shirtfronts him with a little help from old King James in Raised To Pray . Not, not the sword, but the good book that every good old young boy packs in his pick-up for those mornings after the sinners sleepovers. That made it easy for Farr to enlist his old co-writer Rhett Akins on debut single Hot Mess to fuel the follies of the female outlaw in Criminal. Yes, she's a beautiful criminal because she steals Farr's character's heart and sets him free - perhaps a sibling of the senorita who is subject of his desires in Better In Boots. |
Finally at song eight Farr joins Atkins and fellow Georgia peach pickers - Atkins, Dallas Davidson and Ben Hayslip to fire up Poor Boy where Tyler 's truck takes him to his lover's door to confront her father who has climbed a few rungs higher on the Dixie ladder.
“I used to drive my truck 'cross the train tracks/ a hard day's work piled up in the back/ muddy boots and a grease stained Atlanta Braves cap, yeah/ I was just a poor boy.”
But, yes, the southern belle rings true for Farr who shares his love for the music of long deceased icon Keith Whitley in the cabin of his truck.
But he's not so lucky when he resorts to that ancient opiate to ease the pain of an absent lover in I Don't Even Want This Bee.
WHY WE LIVE HERE
“Got an alright house and a pretty nice yard/ a screen door dog that stays on guard/ got a buddy up the road that's got my back/ round here it ain't hard to find folks like that/ got a gun and a Bible by my bed/ try to live by the words in red/ I ain't got a lot but I got enough/ by God I believe, in God we trust.” - Why We Live Here - Tyler Farr-Dallas Davidson-Houston Phillips.
But there's light at the end of the tunnel and album in triumphant finale Why We Live Here.
The song, also penned with Davidson, doubles as a troops tribute with all the attributes of country living.
Farr wrote it after a trip overseas to perform on a Navy tour in the Persian Gulf when ISIS were on the rampage, destroying lives, historic monuments and ancient treasures.
“There's fighter jets flying out with bombs and coming back with none,” Farr recalled.
“They're over there sacrificing being with their family to let us be able to walk the streets without having to worry about something happening to us. It was a song I wrote to show gratitude and respect and to honor those men and women. It's the least I could do for them for what they do for us.”
Farr covers all bases with delicious dexterity - almost a boomerang to his embryonic career when he co-wrote Hey Y'all for Colt Ford and She's Just Like That for Joe Nichols.
Following the merger of his label, BNA Records , Farr moved to Columbia to release second single, Hello Goodbye .
His third single Redneck Crazy became his first Top 10 hit in 2013, followed by #hit Whiskey in My Water.
All four singles were included on debut album, Redneck Crazy , released on September 30, 2013.