A Crooked Kind of Strait
Country singer George Strait’s latest album proves he’s anything but predictable
by Michael McCall
George Strait
Honkytonkville (MCA)
George Strait seems determined to confound those who call him predictable. By ending the ’90s with “Murder on Music Row,” a duet with kindred spirit Alan Jackson that wittily jabbed Nashville for its pop-country emphasis, Strait secured his reputation as one of the last of the country traditionalists still working out of this town. But that created a problem for him: He may love honky-tonk and Western swing, but he considers himself more dimensional than his image as the trad-and-true king of old-school country music suggests.
So, after “Murder,” Strait took the ironic turn of releasing two of the most pop-leaning albums of his career. While he’s never shied from middle-of-the-road balladry, 2000’s George Strait and 2001’s The Road Less Traveled proved he’s just as good at sophisticated adult pop as he is at Texas two-steps. In doing so, he proved to naysayers yet again that pop need not be synonymous with schlock.
Both albums feature work as subtle and sublime as any in his career. The self-titled album is the more consistent of the two: The sensual come-on of “The Night’s Just Right for Love,” the heartbreaker “If It’s Going to Rain” and the hit “Go On” each feature elegant, effortless phrasing and moonlit arrangements as suitable for a sleek Lincoln Navigator as for a hard-working Chevy pickup.
The Road Less Traveled doesn’t maintain as high a standard, but its best tracks probe relationships with the kind of mature complexity that made its predecessor shine. The hits, “She’ll Leave You With a Smile” and “Run,” may not hit the peaks of Strait’s best-loved material, but they’re beautifully conceived tunes that will stand the test of time. The version of Merle Haggard’s “My Life’s Been Grand” is Strait at his best—and in its spare mix of strings and steel guitar, offers as much of a road map for what he does best as anything he’s recorded.
But just as Strait appeared to be pledging allegiance to new-millennium country, he returned with Honkytonkville, his most traditional album in ages. Released in June, the record sports rural Southern rhythms and musical accents that recall Strait’s early ’80s classics, back when he rode into Nashville with a quiet authority and a down-home appeal that reminded country music of what it had lost during the Urban Cowboy era.
But Strait has never been retro. Even his most hardcore honky-tonk is attuned to contemporary possibilities: He keeps it country while fitting into the context of the time in which he lives. Honkytonkville may feature shuffle rhythms and steel-and-fiddle leads, but it’s not the same old-school sound found in Strait classics like 1981’s “Unwound” or 1983’s “Amarillo by Morning.” The blend of strings, fiddle and keyboards on his new “Cowboys Like Us,” or the smooth way the twin fiddles get support from a sighing string orchestration on the title track, shows how seamlessly the past can be nudged into the future without losing touch with its roots.
Strait’s still trying new themes: He’s never sung about religion or prison (both bedrock country music topics), but manages here to combine them into one romping new tune, “I Found Jesus on the Jailhouse Floor.” It’s unlike anything he’s previously recorded. The same could be said of the album’s first hit, “Tell Me Something Bad About Tulsa,” a gem of a laid-back country-soul tune that underscores the ties between R&B singers like Arthur Alexander and O.C. Smith and Nashville crooners like Don Williams and Conway Twitty.
Another standout, “My Infinite Love,” mines familiar territory for Strait—the tender, devotional love song. But it’s the details that count, the way the steel guitar sweeps behind his conversational tone while barely-there background vocals and airy, sustained keyboard chords linger like an orange sunset over his shoulder.
Working again with co-producer Tony Brown, as he has since 1992, Strait returns to his roots not as an attempt to capture the magic of his early career. Instead, he’s intent on conjuring something just as fresh as the standards he recorded 20 years ago. It’s not Hank Williams or Bob Wills, but it brings their music forward in a way that’s as dead-on country as a Bandera cattle ranch or an Amarillo feed store.
Strait’s not alone in charting this course. We’re now experiencing at least the second generation of artists he’s influenced. A dozen years ago, he inspired Alan Jackson and early Garth Brooks; today, his ideas resonate in the records of Brad Paisley, Joe Nichols and Craig Morgan, all of whom owe a debt to Strait.
As funny and as right-on as “Murder on Music Row” may have been, Strait has spent the ensuing four years illustrating how predictions of the death of country music are as premature as they’ve always been. Country music makes its greatest advances when it shows pride in where it comes from, yet accepts that staying tuned to modern innovations is the best way to keep it robust and lively. It’s not just Strait’s ability to stay in touch with the past that makes him great; it’s also his ability to recognize how he can fit into today’s world without changing who he is.
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