CD Review- Randy Travis- Around The Bend

Randy Travis emerged with a classic and deep baritone voice in the early 1980’s. It’s been nine years since his last true country album (he’s released five country gospel albums over those nine years- two of which won Grammys) and it’s fairly incredible to think how the sound of country music has changed in those nine years, let alone the 20+ years since Travis burst onto the country scene.

His latest release, Around The Bend is prototypical Travis music. Producer Kyle Lehning has been at the helm of every single Travis album and he massages the sound to a traditional classical country any Travis fan would recognize. Travis’s voice has aged a little, but his depth and the rough edges getting there (a reason I love the late Johnny Cash’s albums as they draw you into the singer’s soul more than the overproduced overdubbed lyrics on some releases today) make up for the weathering of his upper register of notes.

There are some truly great songs on this CD that belong in an eventual Randy Travis box set. Songs like Everything I Own Has Got A Dent as well as Every Head Bowed are when Travis is at his best- singing upbeat conversational songs with a story. Those in the iPod generation will be good to add a little old-school to their collection.

Around the Bend would have been a lot more fun had Travis and Lehning picked more lively hooks and guitar picking exercises and fewer of the preachy ballads that weigh the album down a little. Dig Two Graves, Till I’m Dead and Gone and You Didn’t Have A Good Time are, quite honestly, downers without being that emotionally deep like a Merle Haggard song (or in today’s music, a Jamey Johnson tune). They come across a little heavy-handed without actually moving you.

For this release, I’d say if you’re a longtime Randy Travis fan, it’s worth the addition to your CD library. If you don’t have one of his CD’s in your collection, go out and purchase one of the greatest country albums ever made- Travis’s Always & Forever- and then add Everything I Own Has Got A Dent and Every Head Bowed as singles to your personal music player.