Tularosa

Stephanie Urbina Jones

 2018 - Soundly Music.  This is our first introduction to Stephanie and I find her vocal skills quite impressive as she articulates each lyric with passion, heart, and soul.  This is something that is lacking with today’s country music entertainers; as most performers tend to caterwaul rather than tap into and express the emotions contained within the song.  Nonetheless, this album is filled with covers on some of country music’s most notorious songs.  These songs include Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” Hank Williams Sr.’s “Cold, Cold Heart,” Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” Lynn Anderson’s “Rose Garden,” “Walkin’ After Midnight” made famous by Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” Merle Haggard’s “Silver Wings,” Buck Owens’ “Tiger By The Tail,” Tom T. Hall’s “Harper Valley PTA,” and more.  Ms. Jones brings a Tex-Mex attitude into her performances of each of these classic songs. This new mentality does breathe new life into these well-known tunes; nonetheless, I am not one for cover songs.  I personally feel that any entertainer, who re-records notorious songs like these, is just pointing out the fact that they can imitate the original artist.  In addition, there are many instances where the cover artist degrades the well-known song with their version.  With Stephanie Urbina Jones, I feel that this album is masquerading her true talents, especially as a Tex-Mex artist.  I will state that this project does make me want to seek more from Ms. Jones as her vocal capabilities are highly listenable and reliably solid.  If you are the type who enjoys covers of familiar songs, than this one is for you.  For me, I’ll seek the entertainers who originally made these classic songs hits.   Vocal capabilities: $$$-$$$$.  Over all project: $

(This review was printed in the November / December 2018 issue of Strictly Country Magazine.)

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