Saturday night in rural America. Just saying that, you can practically hear the pickup tires on the gravel road. Whether it’s the Grange Hall in California’s Central Valley, the dance hall in Texas Hill Country, or the Legion Post in eastern Tennessee, the scene is similar. The same loud-but-ineffective air conditioner, plenty of ice cold beer, and a band playing timeless country music. The subtle difference in styles can be the banjo in Appalachia, the ubiquitous fiddle in the Lone Star state, or the twangy Telecaster and pedal steel in Bakersfield. San Francisco Bay Area native Laura Benitez and her band, the Heartache, embody that latter sound on their latest album, California Centuries.
The CD ends with a song that could also have opened the record. I’m With the Band is a honky-tonk anthem from the perspective of the band. Benitez voices the sentiment of all musicians when they started playing live again, the draw of the crowd making up for the cheap disrespect that’s sadly just part of the game. Are You Using Your Heart showcases Benitez’ shiny soprano vocals when she relates a story of an all-too-familiar pickup line. When she sings, “he’s three drinks in, and anyway he isn’t shy”, well, we’ve all known that guy.
Although the music conveys a fun, two-step-ready, sound, Benitez isn’t afraid to use the lyrics to deliver a somber message. Gaslight makes it clear where she stands on socially divisive issues, but the observation that “if we talk about it, we might have to change” is a more universal truth. Invisible is a country waltz about being heard and seen and taking a stand. A Love Like Yours is a flat-out love song to her life and musical partner, Bryan Kilgore. Bad Things uses an all-too-common California wildfire metaphor as an observation on the pandemic and humans’ ability to get through the worst disasters.
There are a couple of songs on California Centuries that veer into rock and roll, and old-timey, music and they make for maybe a more rounded effort than previous albums. At its core, though, this is an old-school country music record, and if that’s your jam, Laura Benitez and the Heartache should be in your playlist.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.