Down At The Liquor Store

Steve Azar & The Kings Men

2017 - Ride Records.  In every entertainer’s career there comes a time when their soul is calling them back home where their career began.  For Steve Azar, the time is now and he captures his return to his home in the Delta of the great state of Mississippi, within this album.  Throughout music history we have heard some beautiful and elegant songs that capture that Delta essence found along the Mississippi region. Songs that have touched our souls as they bring us back to that historic area.  Nonetheless, Steve Azar tries way to hard to incorporate and blend the Delta sound within his music that it merely loses it’s appeal.  “Tender And Tough” and the title cut are perfect examples of poor arrangements.  In these two songs, it sounds as if Steve has no idea what beat to set the tone of the song to.  I understand that he wants to bring the Delta beat and mentality into his music, but he lacks the know how to merge the two.  My other complaint with the music that Steve provides on this album is that many of the lyrics lack flow within the song.  A great example of this is found in his song “Wake Me From The Dead,” as the lyrics are quite choppy.  Perhaps this is just Steve’s performance style, but then again wouldn’t the producer acknowledge the lack of blending within the song? However, in “Chance I’ll Take,” the choppy lyrics or performance style actually works.  It is a win, win or lose, lose situation.  It really depends on the song.   As I listen to “Road Isn’t There Anymore,” I can not help but wonder what this song would sound like if Steve really dug deep into his soul to perform this one with pure and raw emotions.  It’s a beautiful song, but lacks the passion that it demands to bring it to life.  There are a few songs on this album that stand out enough for me to say take a listen.  These songs include “Ode To Sonny Boy,” “Start To Wanderin’ My Way” and “Wake Me From The Dead.”  I also found three songs that we would love add to our list of Top Songs of 2017 and add them to the ever growing list of songs nominated for the Spirit Award’s Song of The Year Award, however each of these songs contains a Caribbean beat that destroys the song.  These songs include “She Just Rolls With Me,” “Greenville,” and a beautiful inspirational song called “These Crossroads.”  It’s the bogus sounding Caribbean drum beat that sabotages each of these beautiful songs.  This album is a toss up for me.  On one side there are choppy lyrics mixed with beautiful melodies and then on the flip side we hear beautiful lyrics mixed with disagreeable melodies.  My major complaint is that these miscalculations could have been easily corrected.  As is I must give it a $$$-

(This review was printed in the September / October issue of Strictly Country Magazine.)

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