Honky Tonk Confidential is Washington, D.C.’s answer to the Austin Lounge Lizards. This five-piece combo draws on various forms of country music to make erudite, humorous musical commentary on modern American life, both inside and outside the Beltway.
Your Trailer or Mine their second full-length release mines the many rich veins of country music, from bluegrass to lounge, rockabilly to surf, in “16 songs about loving, drinking, cheating, murdering and dying.”
The band members write many of their own songs, and three of them take turns on lead vocals: Diana Quinn, who also plays guitars, Mike Woods, electric guitar and Dobro, and Geff King, bass. Things really cook when Woods and pedal steel player Bobby Martin trade licks, which they do regularly. And there’s plenty of Floyd Cramer-style tinkling ivories courtesy of guest Peter Bonta.
The songs’ titles offer pretty good clues to what makes Honky Tonk Confidential tick. “It Still Hurts,” “That Depends (On What You Mean by Lonesome),” “Daddy’s in a Honky Tonk Downtown” and “Love My Baby (All Night Long)” are what’s in the band’s name, honky tonk music with an occasional verbal twist. The title track is a sleazy trailer-trash love song. “Hi-Tech Redneck” is about a computer geek who likes country music. “Rock Creek Crawl” is a rockabilly number about D.C.-area traffic jams. And “Pee Wee’s Gone” is a bluegrass ballad of the fall of the former king of campy kids’ TV, all without the use of a single bad word but plenty of clever wordplay.
A couple of tracks, Louise Kirchen’s “Big Hat, No Cattle” and Evan Johns’ “Cowboy Whatcha Got on Me” are deft put-downs of modern country music, its industry and its urban cowboy fans. “Goin’ Round the World” and “I Love the Bartender” are odes to the joys of taverns. And “Sancho Panzer” is a surfabilly instrumental with some Mexicali overtones — it’s similar to the type of song Southern Culture on the Skids excels at, only closer in spirit to the Ventures than Link Wray or Dick Dale.
Which brings up my only real criticism of Your Trailer. It’s all just a bit too crisp, clean and perky. You can understand every word the first time you hear these songs, because the singers enunciate like eighth-grade English teachers. And the straight bass lines and boom-chick-chick drum patterns sound a bit mechanical.
But Honky Tonk Confidential is an entertaining breath of fresh air, the type of band I’d just love to spend a Saturday night with down at the honky tonk, singing along and ordering another round of light beer. Tastes great and less filling, as they say.
(Too Many Dogs, 2002)
