If you’re over a certain age, and grew up in flyover country, you undoubtedly spent a lot of time in a local establishment with pool tables, smoke-stained ceilings, mighty fine cheeseburgers, and a jukebox in the corner. Â The Blue Moon and the Downtowner were my particular favorites. Â Besides an appreciation for fresh ground, corn-fed chuck roast, what I got most out of those joints was a surprisingly wide appreciation for music. Â Their jukeboxes had Patsy Cline and Styx, Freddy Fender and Lynyrd Skynyrd, Frank Sinatra and the Stones. Â Mike and the Moonpies frontman Mike Harmeier has put out a sort of tribute to those jukeboxes with their latest album, Mockingbird.
The title cut is an admission that as he’s grown older, Mike has adopted many of the traits of his father and grandfather, including a love of the jukebox from the Longbranch Saloon.  It’s kind of a honky-tonk number and is one of the more uptempo songs on the disc, along with Delilah and its spirited Marshall-Tucker-meets-the-Texas-Playboys swing.  South First Blvd is at first a little too modern to fit with the rest of the song list, but then drops in a very-redeeming saxophone part that’s pure Gerry Rafferty.
At the other end of the tempo spectrum sits a couple of numbers that would have made George Jones proud. Â Never Leaving Texas starts with the admission that “I’ve been seeing other women…at the bottom of a glass.” One Is the Whiskey laments, “I’ve got my reasons for not staying home. Â One is the whiskey, and the other one’s gone.” The last song on the album, Miserable Man, while not reminding me of anyone in particular, perhaps hits home hardest with its hard luck tale of a “heartbroken woman and miserable man”.
 If you’re a fan of old school country music, and its variants and influences, you’ll be hard pressed to find a song on Mockingbird you don’t like.  I name-dropped a lot of bands from an era, but don’t be fooled.  This album isn’t a bunch of copied tunes, but a series of love letters to a lifetime of stories brought to life in song.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.