Review Summary: Featuring friendly washboards and dueling washboards and every other kind of washboard!
Hey there, loyal Sputnik followers, have you heard that bluegrass and country is the next cool thing to like? Oh sure, I mean there’s been a sort of creeping Americana influence into a lot of indie and punk bands, and Mumford & Zzzs struck it big with watered down country folk influences, but there’s a whole huge world of really cool, interesting, and just plain ‘ol fun country bands and singers just bubbling below the surface of current hip music trends, waiting to explode. So, you know that means? Yup, you’ll need to be able to pull out a namedrop at any moment’s notice soon! Preferably, it’ll be somebody super obscure, that is impossible to find much of on the internet, so that no one can call you out on not knowing what any of their songs sound like (how can they call you out on anything when you can just make it up!), but has been around a while and isn’t readily accessible in your area. Well, luckily for those of you who don’t live near Silver Dollar City, I have the perfect person for you to mindlessly talk about to all of your super cool music compatriots: Washboard Leo Thomas.
Good ‘ol Washboard Earl Jones is a simple man. He plays the washboard, electric washboard, spoons, and jaw harp while jamming some cutesy little country tunes with his backup band, who since they remain completely uncredited (to make room for the lovely signature on the insert) we will just call ‘the ‘Washboards’. It’s a mix of upbeat jangly jams and “fresh” takes on a few traditional songs, all the while never straying from the goofy path Washboard Joe has most likely trailblazed in his long (well over thirty years!) career. However, the most important part about the music here is that it’s nearly impossible to find any studio versions on the internet! So you can make up some nonsense about “Everything is Alright” having a pots and pans solo, and when your more suspicious (Read: douchebag) friends try and look it up, you can always fall back on the tried and true “Well he’s a jam band kinda guy, of course it’s different live!”
So what do you say if they ask for the CD? Well, obviously you listened to it with a couple of your friends in that one banjo punk band from that town a few miles south. You wish you could totally blast it with them, but unfortunately the Washboard Leonard Nimoy experience is probably gonna have to wait till the band gets back from their tour. Hopefully, by that time everyone will have forgotten exactly who you namedropped, and will only be focused on how underground and esoteric your Country music choices are. Oh, in case you missed it at the top of the review, the album is called
Alabama Bluegrass. Make sure not to say something else, or else your cynical bullsh
it will be called out and you will forever be a musical pariah, forced to listen to obscure and obtuse crap in a vain effort to redeem yourself from your own pretension.
