Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, many of the top country artists were female/male duos. You know them all; Dolly and Porter, Tammy and George, Loretta and Conway, June and Johnny. The typical recording process at the time was the producer would assemble a team of crack instrumentalists in the studio, and then the singers would come in to record, perhaps never having met any of the other musicians. Although not originally their plan, that’s the story of the latest record from Atlanta-based duo Willie Heath Neal and Kira Annalise, known as The Waymores. The couple went in to lay down a couple of covers for a singles release and became so enamored with the session they immediately starting planning how to do a full album, which became Greener Pastures.
The first cover they chose was a Buck Owens/Dusty Rhodes classic, Under Your Spell. It has that old-school dance hall sound that’s still fresh 50 years later. The same boom-chucka-boom-chucka drum and swooning pedal steel can be found on Marty Robbins’ Don’t Worry. They also cover a John Prine tune, You’ve Got Gold, after a video of them doing In Spite of Ourselves gained a lot of new followers.
The original numbers are the star of the show, though. But I Don’t is a classic country waltz with a line that’s a whole story unto itself, “if you had a heart, this song would break it, but you don’t, so I pretend”. Hill Country Waltz is another dance in 3/4 time, and a bit of an homage to Tammy Wynnette. Stylistically, the outlier is She’s Gone, a rock-and-roll, boogie-woogie cut clocking in at a punkish 2 minutes flat. The last song on the CD is Tavern Time, a honky-tonker about “howling at the moon and getting stoned.”
Those early duos were in the thick of the countrypolitan movement to add strings and sophistication to what had been more rural music. On Greener Pastures, producer Shel Talmy has clawn back the rootsier style with Neal and Annalise delivering a blue collar sound that would make The Waymores a perfect fit for any of the jukeboxes in the honky-tonks they sing about.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.