Montgomery Gentry end their latest, Some People Change, with “Free Ride in the Fast Lane,” a tale of a Kentucky boy who goes to the big city, meets a woman who treats him like a “slot machine,” and stays on top by dint of never forgetting the advice an old man gave him the day he left town. The record could have just as coherently begun with this song, which signs off with a spoken “Let’s get the hell out of here,” but the album manages to pack a conceptual kick, even as the duo never quite get specific enough about how, or why, people change.
It’s been quite a year for the duo. Their Something to Be Proud Of: The Best of 1999-2005 collection was certified gold. Meanwhile, Troy Gentry will appear in a Minnesota court on Nov. 27 to face charges he killed a tame bear in 2004 and then tagged it as if he had shot it in the wild, a violation of the federal Lacey Act.
Recorded over a year, and sporting lively production values and performances, Some People Change intelligently and elegantly maximizes Southern rock. “We grew up playing music in the nightclubs, and we grew up on guys like Charlie Daniels, Waylon and Willie, Merle Haggard, Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers,” Eddie Montgomery says. “Their music and their lyrics were always in your face.”
Like many acts who come from the tradition of Southern bands emulating older Southern bands rooted in the Stones or Bob Seger, Montgomery Gentry rock out, but sound a little fuzzy around the edges when they try for a change-of-pace ballad or a big statement. It’s a bit confounding, since Montgomery Gentry are all about big statements such as Some People’s title track.
“It’s about anybody,” Montgomery says of the song. “When I was growing up, my dad always said, ‘Don’t let it control you—you control it.’ That’s with anything, with eating, religion—anything.” It’s a curious song: the verses are nicely judged, even stately, and the chorus is a beer commercial. The first verse describes a man “raised to think like his daddy, full of hate,” while the second introduces a woman battling alcoholism. But the chorus baldly cries out, “Here’s to the strong / Thanks to the brave / Don’t give up hope / Some people change,” ultimately asserting, “Love finds a way.” As with many of MG’s songs, the contrast between lived experience and the urge to resort to broad abstractions produces an effect that is perhaps far from what its creators intended.
Still, “Some People Change” attempts to address complex, contentious subjects such as religion and racism. Since their first record, Tattoos & Scars, the duo haven’t shied away from making their rather libertarian viewpoint explicit. “Ain’t too much these boots can’t do/ Might even kick a little sense into you,” they sang on “Hillbilly Shoes,” and “Daddy Won’t Sell the Farm” disguised fear of encroaching modernity behind seemingly comic lyrics.
But more significantly, it’s a song that illustrates the way the duo seem to regard living in gentrifying exurbia as equivalent to living in the “eye of an urban storm,” as the song proclaims. On 2004’s You Do Your Thing, the title track stood up for SUVs, prayer, religious fundamentalism, radical individualism and the loving paddling of children.
But if the duo’s politics are strong, if a bit undefined, Montgomery makes no apologies for them. “I’ve never been a Democrat or a Republican,” he says. “I’ve been totally for America. It’s the greatest country in the world—we can say or be anything we want to in this country.” He describes “Some People Change” as a song for and about “working-class people, or people going to school who are bustin’ their ass.”
Where they discover their métier is on the marvelous “A Man’s Job.” Musically, it’s brilliant; the chords suggest humorous resignation. “It tore me up to sign them papers/ That set you free,” they sing. “Then seein’ your boy-toy strap my babies in them car seats / Made me want to knock the dust off that peacemaker / And go out with a bang.” Southern macho displays its humane side, since the narrator decides not to shoot the guy who has taken up with his ex-wife.
“You always hear about the man taking off with the young woman,” Montgomery says. “I thought, ‘What about if we flip this around?’ Because, one day I was flippin’ through the TV, and I heard this woman talkin’ on there—I think her name is Dr. Judy or something. And she was talking about how it’s absolutely perfect for an older woman to go ask out a 20-year-old man. I thought, if that had been a man on there, she’d have been crucifying the hell out of him.”
Whatever its genesis, it stands as perhaps the finest track on the record. Some People uses superb players like Reese Wynans, Brent Rowan and Dan Dugmore, who work off a basic blues groove, and the way the vocals work against the song’s meter makes this a fully realized work that also happens to be funny and politically incorrect.
In the end, Some People Change is like current Southern politics. Montgomery Gentry substitute platitudes for action and generalities for the telling detail. It’s a shame, because you get the feeling they know more than they’re letting on.
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