I am not a fan of Nashville’s Lower Broadway. While authentic country music may be the claim, drunken bridesmaids are in much greater abundance and are what’s setting the atmosphere. Every rule has an exception, though, and Robert’s Western World fits the bill here. On a recent trip to Music City, a pitstop at Robert’s afforded me the delightful surprise of hearing Nashvillian, by way of Los Angeles and Longview, Washington, Sarah Gayle Meech. She’s about to release a new album, Easin’ On, and it confirms the measure of musical goodness I heard that afternoon up on the dais of one of the country’s great dive bars.
The record opens with Time For a Change, a countrypolitan number lyrically setting the stage for the rest of the track list. It’s all about the realization that if you’re going to make things better you have to start with yourself. At that point, literally and figuratively, things change. The next cut, the title track, features a dirty electric guitar in a honky-tonk tune about moving forward. You can hear the disgust when Meech sings, “I lost my dignity saving yours.” Light of Day also has a dirty, swampy sound that’s as much Creedence Clearwater Revival as it is country. In between is a 70’s pop-sounding cut, Love Me, put to country that’s a ringer for Glen Campbell in his heyday.
Meech, and co-producer Shawn Byrne, explore a large swath of Nashville-related styles throughout the record. Stars is an old-fashioned country waltz. Forget About Me ticks the other end of the spectrum in an outlaw country plea to take her advice and move along. Trouble With Me is an earnest ballad about the mentality of addiction, not just the physical kind, but emotionally. Meech acknowledges she’d “fight my shadow if it disagrees”, and that pretty well sums up the challenge of owning up to the problem. The most surprising song is a kind of doo-wop There He Goes, with bells and tinkling piano.
I suspect that Sarah Gayle Meech could be one of those 20-years-in-the-trenches overnight sensations. She’s mastered a variety of styles and clearly isn’t afraid of putting in her 10,000 hours. You can hear all of that in play on her new record, Easin’ On. Or swing in to Robert’s and hear it in person.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.