I love it when an artist takes someone else’s well-known song and so transforms the piece that they start to own it more than the original artist or songwriter. Ervin Stellar, the stage name of Andrew Jordan, does that on his new EP with Shanty, the Jonathan Edwards classic. Stellar injects such a nonchalant tempo and lost-in-time vocal delivery that it’s hard to understand why it wasn’t that way all along. He also take a CCR classic, Who’ll Stop the Rain, slows it down and makes it an even more desperate plea for sanity.
The 3 new songs on the record aren’t slouches either. Love Is Love is maybe my favorite, with its promotion of the idea there’s no bad love, so just get as much as you can. Stellar gives it a Dylanesque feel with the harmonica that makes it as much a 60’s pop song as a 20’s country song. My biggest disappointment was that this isn’t a full length album. EP’s are supposed to leave you wanting more, and Nothing To Prove certainly did that to me.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.