Mark Chesnutt’s 1995 Decca album Wings is a great example of Tony Brown’s special ability as a producer to provide his artists the trust, space, and artistic freedom to fully explore and establish their musical identity.
Since his debut in 1990 with Too Cold at Home, Chesnutt had been a significant presence on the charts, running hit after hit into the top ten, with several reaching the top. He was also a platinum selling artist. His greatest commercial shortcoming, however, was being neither Garth Brooks nor Clint Black. As big as he was, he just was not big enough for Nashville.
Story has it that Mark Wright, his producer for his first four MCA albums, wanted to push Chesnutt towards a more pop-country sound, hoping to achieve a greater level of stardom and wider success for the Beaumont, Texas native.
Chesnutt didn’t want to go that route. He no doubt noticed the pitfalls of becoming pegged as a novelty act that were already dogging fellow traditionalist like Tracy Byrd and Joe Diffie. In The Encyclopedia of Country Music, Rick Mitchell described Wings as a “honky-tonk concept album” that “bucked the commercial trend toward throwaway novelty tunes and lightweight country-pop.”
Fans of Chesnutt will recognize that Brown brought him as close to the hard core honky-tonk stylings he would so wonderfully achieve later while working with producer Jimmy Ritchey once he abandoned any delusions of radio relevance.
At the time, what was Chesnutt’s reward for sticking to his guns and choosing to work with the red-hot Tony Brown during the country boom years of the nineties?
Wings was his first album to not achieve either gold or platinum RIAA certification. From a sales perspective, it was a stiff and a commercial flop. I guess he learned pride’s not that hard to swallow, once you chew it long enough.
From a creative and artistic perspective, the album was a statement and a revelation: Chesnutt was the real deal, an artist with pure country convictions and clear competency performing it.
This was Chesnutt’s first quiet claim to the country crown as other bigger artists were increasingly having their credentials challenged and loyalties to the tradition questioned.
Making creative writing teachers happy everywhere, Chesnutt expertly demonstrates his country bona fides rather than posturing and simply telling us about them.
For starters, Chesnutt makes it clear he is unafraid to play the same old country songs. The opening track is essentially an overture. “As The Honky Tonk Turns” brilliantly sets the theme and sound for what is to follow with the rest of the album. Chesnutt co-wrote the song with Roger Springer and Tommy Nixon, inspired by watching the crowd during his younger days playing small venues and small honky-tonks.
Brown is still unabashedly cross-promoting his artists. The first single from the album is a cover of the Todd Snider penned “Trouble” from his Tony Brown-produced debut album, Songs For the Daily Planet. The hit would reach #18 on the Billboard singles chart.
“It Wouldn’t Hurt to Have Wings” would reach #7 while the third single, “Wrong Place, Wrong Time,” would barely crack the top 40.
If including a Todd Snider cover on a traditional album wasn’t unexpected enough, Brown reprises a Jim Lauderdale cut from his work with George Strait on 1992’s Pure Country soundtrack. Strait was the stallion in Brown’s stable. “The King of Broken Hearts” was first heard on Lauderdale’s 1991 album, Planet of Love. Lee Ann Womack would record it again in 2008 on her album Call Me Crazy. The song rightfully has legs and has become something of a country calling card.
Chesnutt dips into the Lauderdale songbook for a second time with “I May Be a Fool.”
We can forgive Chesnutt if he sometimes sounds like George Jones because he is so convincing and utterly confident interpreting these hardcore honky-tonk delights.
He shines on Jerry Chesnut’s “Pride’s Not Hard to Swallow.” This tracks, because Jerry Chesnut wrote “A Good Year for the Roses” for the Possum and “It’s Four in the Morning” for the Singing Sheriff, Faron Young. Hank Jr. first recorded “Pride’s Not Hard to Swallow” in 1973 and had a #3 hit with it.
With “Settlin’ for What They Get,” Brown calls up a work from the Mack Vickery songbook. Vickery is the songwriter behind George Strait’s “The Fireman” and Ricky Van Shelton’s “I’ll Leave This World Loving You.”
My favorite song from the album is “(I Think) I’ve Finally Broken Mine.” It’s a reverb-drenched song exploring the regret of having toyed with hearts as playthings. Chesnutt wonderfully communicates the shameful surprise and humiliation of having managed to break his own heart after being so careless with another’s. He sounds like a child realizing he should have known better. I absolutely adore this performance. I also can’t help but imagine Raul Malo singing this with the Mavericks.
“Strangers, ”another Chesnutt co-wrote, is the perfect ending to the album. The song bluntly details a doomed relationship that will dissolve with the sunrise as a couple realizes that they will be strangers come the morning. The finality of that realization parallels the wrinkle in time this album offers its listeners. Chestnutt travels across the country universe, stopping to visit songs from the past and the present, finding strength in the arms of some classic traditions and sounds that we likely know may be from a world of pretend.
Similar to Mary Stuart, Chesnutt would be tempted to reach for the brass ring of mainstream radio success a few more times with subsequent albums, before settling into his comfort zone with hard core country music later in his career.
Wings is a quiet classic album from the ’90s, a thoughtful and intentional collection of songs holding country music history together.
This is my favorite Chesnutt album by a wide margin, and was one of the first albums that I remember making me feel a sense of injustice over its reception. Critical and commercial reception aligned extraordinarily well with my personal tastes for the first few years that I was a die hard country fan. 1996 was when I’d start to get frustrated that excellent albums from Chesnutt, Kim Richey, Pam Tillis, Lorrie Morgan, Bobbie Cryner, Vince Gill, etc. were either underperforming compared to their previous releases, or just not breaking through at all.
I’m also struck by this as this series progresses. Brown has produced so many of my favorite albums in the catalogs of so many artists. For My Broken Heart, Wings, Songs For the Daily Planet, The Girl of Your Dreams, What a Crying Shame, Lead On, The Key. The list goes on and on.
So what the heck happened with Trisha Yearwood? How did this producer known for producing the best albums from our top talents collaborate with the greatest albums artist of her generation and make her only subpar album? It’s her worst by as wide a margin as today’s album was Chesnutt’s best. It baffles me to this day.
I’m not quite as hard on the “Where Your Road Leads” album as you are, but I have absolutely zero memory of any of its singles other than “There Goes My Baby” and I think the title track is easily Trisha’s worst single (even if it was the only track on that project not produced by Tony Brown). To me, that album overall is a sign of how many more missteps Tony Brown would have in the 21st century.
I noticed Tony Brown’s decline in quality throughout multiple George Strait albums. The most obvious culprit is the increasing reliance on auto-tuning the shit out of George’s voice, but there are also some other questionable choices such as the excessive crash cymbals all over “I Saw God Today” or all the reverb on “It Just Comes Natural” (especially where he clearly flubs a note on “tumbleweeds roll”). Brown is also responsible for that cello on “Johnny & June” by Heidi Newfield that blows out my eardrums every time that song comes on.
But to me, Tony’s worst work is the Reba/Kelly version of “Because of You”, which is so bombastic and crunchy that it makes Dann Huff sound restrained by comparison. It is easily one of the worst production jobs I’ve ever heard on a mainstream country single in my life, up there with Miranda Lambert’s “Over You” and Cole Swindell’s “Hope You Get Lonely Tonight”.
Definitely not a popular opinion ’round these parts, but I liked Where Your Road Leads. Granted, it kinda came off like a crossover grab (no doubt the label’s idea) after the success of How Do I Live, but it had some good songs on it (I thought Wouldn’t Any Woman and the Jamie O’Hara cut would’ve made better singles than Powerful Thing or the Diane Warren discounter). And despite it’s relative success, it says something that Trisha returned to Garth Fundis and a more roots-oriented sound with Real Live Woman (which has grown in estimation with me over the years).
I agree this is a great album!
I’ve been listening to Mark Chesnutt a lot recently, for some reason, and it seems that he stays true to his traditional country roots pretty well, even on albums when he makes pop turns here and there. Even his I Don’t Want to Miss A Thing album has a lot of good traditional music on it, title song not withstanding. I think my favorite Chesnutt album is Lost in the Feeling, but this might be due to the three Shawn Camp songs that are on it. On a side note, it’s baffling to me that his What A Way to Live album doesn’t seem to be available digitally.
Anyone who’s covering both Shawn Camp and “Lost in the Feeling” clearly knows what the hell they’re doing.
Then again, you could say that about almost every cover song he did.
I very much liked this album – I think that Jerry Chesnut’s “Pride’s Not Hard to Swallow” is my favorite track on the album (I’m not saying I like his version better than Hank Jr.’s but I like it equally well).
Truthfully, I really like every song on this album, except “Trouble” and even that song is okay. Unfortunately, country radio was starting to morph into something else by 1996. Its ultimate ruination would take another decade, but you could definitely see the signs
Something about “It Wouldn’t Hurt to Have Wings” actually makes it sound UNDER-produced to my ears. Like all the instruments are too quiet. It feels like a more modern version of the way Snuff Garrett produced David Frizzell and Shelly West albums. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to how Chesnutt sounded with Mark Wright’s louder production.
That said, every Chesnutt album is great in my book. Dude knew how to pick songs and just sang them without a lot of flourish.