BO WHITE'S REVIEW OF THE NEW CD

The Forbes Brothers have produced an eclectic and a wonderfully unique piece of music with "The Wrong End of the Bar". They're really a bunch of scallywags - puttin' out an elpee that even country purists cannot possibly complain about.
Yet sneakin' in all kinda influences... so that Hank Williams is rubbin' elbows with Bob Seger.
Sixties Dee-troit rock meets Nashville with snippets of the Grateful Dead, Jimmy Buffett, the Allman Brothers, and Badfinger. And though such diverse influences might suggest a sound that's too jumbled and directionless, it's just the opposite. This is a cohesive body of music. Afterall all these influences - rock, country, talkin' blues, folk and jazz - are all CONNECTED. From my perch it's all the same song...uniquely American. "Wrong End of the Bar" may just have accomplished a coup 'de etat - a country album that is rootsy Americana at it's best. Intelligent yet humble. Themes that are at once mundane and universal...all with a strong sense of humanity and more than a little irony. This is a band that can evoke laughter and tears.
Sometimes in the same verse
The strength of the music and the lyrical themes are testimony to the suberb writing of Dennis and Scott Forbes. "Wrong End" is strong in every area of it's creation - great songs (with a couple of post-modern country masterpieces), uniformly superb musicianship, tight harmonies, and one of the best frontmen in the business. Ron Jacobs is not just a great singer but he's also a bonafide sex symbol.
Hey it doesn't hurt...sex sells
Just ask the Dixie Chicks. Or Shania...or Garth Brooks - nah, scatch that.

The disc opens with Opening Act - a mid-tempo jangly country rocker (with a Buffett vibe and a low end guitar solo - stay off that E string) that has Jacobs howlin' and yodelin' with his tongue placed firmly in his cheek. He's pokin' fun at their anonymity yet sayin' something serious about the frustration every working musician has felt at one time or another...that sense of "stuckness" and defeat....especially after regional success beckons the "suits". But the Forbes Brother's have a perspective that suggests that their sense of humor remains intact.

"We are an opening act with no hit record to a house that's packed"
"All of our friends say we deserve more than that"
"But tonight we're just happy being your opening act"
"We're glad to be here tonight under these light and on this stage"
"You'll see our name in fine print...on the back page".

Two Step is a jazzed up country swing tune that opens with Jacobs and the boys bopping their ass off..."bomp-botta-ba - bomp-batta-BOW". It's a song that is deceiving. More to it than you first realize. The infectious beat and melody belie the song's complex theme. No one is innocent. Everyone is relieved.

"She's out doin' the two-step while I'm home doing the twelve steps.
"She says it's deja vu and it's comin' back on you"..."it's coming back on you".

"I've Been Travelin" is a bluegrass shuffle with S-W-E-E-T close harmonies that recall the Osborne Brothers and a big slice of sweet potato pie. The rockin' guitar solo owes a nod to Dickey Betts. This is a song that reveals the vagaries of romance on the road. Sometimes the logistics just don't workout....though I've overheard several female fans proclaim their willingness to travel to the end of the EARTH just to smoke from Ron Jacob's pipe.

"Gotta feelin' we said our first hellos"
"Gotta feelin' we'll meet somewhere down the road".
"I've been travelin' all night just to get next to you"
Ahh yes...love springs eternal from our restless hearts. Doesn't it?

Hip Hop Country Rock - what can I say about this tune that hasn't already been said. And it's gettin' plenty of airplay.
I love It
It has a slow sensual groove. Lazy and funky. It's really the Forbe's homage to their roots. In a well-written irony they slam Nashville suits that question the authenticity of a country band from Michigan yet possess an accent that isn't southern. They know only too well that Elvis is not the only one to wear blue suede shoes.
If anything this is a good-humored satirical piece that also pays respects to their families, friends, and the Detroit work ethic...where they "rock around the clock" with the likes of Nugent, Seger, Ryder, and Kid Rock.
Now... if they'd only mention Wagner, Morgan, Richards, and Tyner
we'd have it all sown up.
For the Forbes Brothers their appeal is also their dilemma. Music written this well is almost TOO good for the radio. This tune may help music fans cross "manufactured" formats and embrace music simply because it's good.
Quality should count for something.

Tell Me is a mid-tempo country love song with the band's trademark close harmonies. A lonely banjo riff sets that "all is lost" tone when love's gone bad. There is a cool fat-back guitar solo that lies somewehere between imaginative work of Ron Koss (Savage Grace) and the rich tones of Dave Mason.

Maybe Just Once is a mid-tempo country rocker that makes me a believer that country puns work just fine when the written in good humor with just the right touch of pathos...

"In the dawn of confusion lookin' for a blue sky"
"Whatever we're doin' we ain't doin' it right".
"Maybe just once when holding you close to me"
"I can get a feeling that's more than what it used to be"
"Maybe just once...
you can think twice". The searing guitar solo - sonic perfection - punctuates the anger behind the lyric. The cool boogie piano in the coda suggests yet another direction for the band. I'd love to hear them tackle that Don Nix chestnut "Goin Down"....a great concert closer!!

Don't Want to be Important Anymore continues the band's genre hopping tendencies - a calypso country tune for the islands of the Caribbean. The waves of sound like the surf crashing gently into the shoreline give the song a quiet confidence. The vibe captures a zen-like theme - that authenticity comes from within. And that chasing the trappings of success JUST may be a meaningless quest.

Wrong End of the Bar is straight-on country western that engages the listener with the most hilarious use of southern irony this side of the Mason-Dixon line. The protagonist comes in after a tough day at work for a burger and a beer but meets his future divorced wife when he "asked to be moved because another man's cigar". Seems he gets sat next to a woman that looked "a little hard". And love blossomed at the bottom of a beer glass. Despite all the great sex and the consumption of massive amounts of alcohol, it didn't work out.

"Now she lives in my house and drives my car"
Just because I sat down at the wrong end of the bar"
"We both finally came to terms "
"It took a couple of years
"Learned my lesson when I stop off - at D'S - for a coupla beers".
Now HE lights up the cigar and the other fella moves down a few stools only to meet...the EX. Mandolin and piano are put to good use on this great track. The band is playin' as cool as country water like them Nashville cats at Bradley's Barn - shades of Ron Elliot and Jerry Reed

Last Lost Highway is a folky talkin' blues ala early Bob Dylan (or any bluesman worth his salt) that pays tribute to the legendary Hank Williams and his broad influence on later country and rock 'n' roll artists. Pure and beautiful. A talking verse is followed by a close harmony chorus. The spectre of Hank Williams sings..

"Make this my last lost highway
"God you know the pain inside of me"
"Please take me home I'm searchin' for that road"
"In the darkness and dust I never sold my soul"

but it's really the singer's voice...our voice. It's a musical parallel processs.
Magificent.

The Difference is another minor masterpiece - a tribute to FDR and the GI's that fought so bravely in World War II. But it's also (and more importantly) a loving tribute from a son to his father. Tom Brokaw lionized them as "the greatest generation". Susan Faludi in her book "Stiffed" wrote about their "bloody baptism" during WWII. (And Forbes specifically mentions the Battle of the Bulge, Salerno, or Omaha Beach in his marvelous lyrics) and their "masculine certainty" and their "honorable sacrifices"
We just knew them as our fathers
Dad
Silent and hardworking...always working. The Forbes Brother's got it right in this bittersweet ode to our fathers.

"The world would look so different"
"And we would not have the same view"
For settling the difference"
"We are forever indebted to you...to all of you"
"The Difference" is nothing greater or less than a humble masterwork of love and gratitude.

Over Again is an ideal closer. It's a country rocker that has airtight close harmonies that recall the Grateful Dead's "American Beauty" or "Workingman's Dead". The chorus is compelling..

"Just fall into these arms
"Listen to what I'm saying"
"Something so easy shouldn't be so hard"

"Love is what we make
"Never felt so lonely"
Never felt such pain"
"Just know I'd do it over again - over again." It's a love story that is chilling in it's purity...in it's suffering. It also speaks to the life of a musician who gives all to his craft. His beauty is his struggle. And despite the lost promise and the missed opportunities...he'd do it over again.

This is a collection of songs that take the listener on quite a sonic journey. And it embraces an unusual but coherent amalgam of styles. Perhaps it's in the Forbes Brother's amiable humility and keen perspective that give this body of work such richness and authenticity. Or it could be their embrace of humanity - those human tendencies to seek out that which is loving and true - that give this disc such a trancendant quality. Forbes Music may prove to timeless. And "Wrong End of the Bar" just may be the breakout disc of the year.

Bo White
11/26/03

GO BACK