If there is just one ’90’s country album capable of instantly taking me back to the early days of that golden decade, it might be Radney Foster ‘s 1992 solo Arista debut Del Rio, TX 1959.
In the album’s liner notes, Foster mentions “sonic integrity,” of having his feet held to the fire and being grateful for the opportunity to “make music from the heart” born of his Texas hometown, Del Rio.
And damn, if you don’t hear that commitment to the discomfort of bringing a tradition’s treasured and troubled past into conversation with a dynamic and still difficult present, creating an all-together forward looking contemporary country music record that still sounds wonderfully unresolved today. Like some mysterious Texas Tardis of Twang, this album is a time machine.
Foster looks familiar and unimposing from the outside, wearing a black western suit and cowboy boots with red, seemingly native American-inspired embroidered accents while standing in front of a mud-brick borderland wall. He looks like a Cherokee Cowboy from Ray Price’s band circa 1959. The visual impact is understated and anchored. Play the record, and the songs, with Foster as a renegade Time Lord, fly off in all directions, offering an almost limitless capacity for analysis.
The entire project is dedicated to Foster’s grandfather whom he credits teaching him to sing “He’s in the Jailhouse Now,” a Jimmie Rodger’s song from 1928, while framing it with a cowboy ballad about a black cowboy, co-written with Alice Randall, celebrating a hero “black as the sky on a moonless night.” In between, there is a co-write with George Ducas. He also writes with women like Kim Richey and Beth Neilson Chapman. One of the most prophetic songs, “Hammer and Nails” was co-written by Foster and Cidny Bullens.
Along the way, Foster has help singing from fellow musicians like Mary Chapin Carpenter, John Hiatt, and Carl Jackson. Harry Stinson, obviously the Dr. Who of Who’s Who in 90’s country, shows up singing harmonies and on the drums in a special band playing behind “Old Silver.” Other members of that backing band included Randy Scruggs on guitar, Sam Bush on mandolin, Lee Roy Parnell on the slide National steel guitar, and Glen Worf on the acoustic bass. People showed up to be a part of this record.
The album was co-produced by Foster and Steve Fishell. It was recorded in Nashville. Foster was recording as a solo act for the first time since contributing his part to the influential and progressive late ’80’s duo Foster and Lloyd and their three super cool RCA albums.
This Arista album was special enough that it produced five singles. The debut single, “Just Call Me Lonesome” hit #10. Foster followed it up with “Nobody Wins.” It reached #2 and remains his highest charting country solo single to date. “Easier Said Than Done” peaked at #20. “Hammer and Nails” reached #34. The final single released to radio was “Closing Time” but it failed to chart. Foster’s mainstream window had closed.
But while it was open, thank God, those songs got out. That neither “Just Call Me Lonesome” nor “Nobody Wins” was validated by reaching #1 on the charts does nothing to diminish their legacy as essential and absolute classic ’90’s country hits.
“Easier Said than Done” swells and is gorgeous and heartbreakingly honest. The inevitable hurt and suffering caused by the narrator’s careless loss in “A Fine Line” looms with the certainty and menacing destructive power of thunderheads building across the West Texas sky. My favourite song is “Closing Time.” Foster is it his empathetic best as a vocalist here, singing about a ruined man trying to forget, drunkenly bragging “You won’t even cross my mind/From here until closing time.” This song, combined with Clint Black’s “Winding Down” and Lyle Lovett’s “Closing Time” presented, in a surprisingly short order, a wonderful trifecta of equally brilliant and melancholic observations of bars and the sentimental lonely introspection that comes with closing them up. Sinatra would call these “tavern” or “saloon” songs.
Additionally, “Hammer and Nails” stands as a manifesto for craftsmanship, strength, and integrity in all things, not just relationships. Lyrically, this listens like a Guy Clark song.
“Old Silver” was Foster’s grandfather and the song’s inspiration. As a songwriter, Foster knows his lines “better than a good carny barker.” Songwriter, novelist, and educator Alice Randall has shared wanting to hear “Went For a Ride” as not “othering” the black protagonist. She has said that whenever she has written a song, the audience has assumed white characters. She has suggested a future where Radney Foster and Justin McBride ( A PBR world champion bull rider “can contribute by respecting being decentered” when the song is performed by a black singer. Interestingly, Randall has imagined a five suite Black Country horse opera built around “Girls Ride Horses Too,” “Went For a Ride, “ Get the Hell Out of Dodge,” “Solitary Hero,” and “The Ballad of Nat Love.”
Hell, this entire album, rooted in the sounds and stories of Foster’s Del Rio, Texas upbringing, was so interesting that Foster re-recorded it twenty years later in 2012. He dubbed it as Del Rio, Texas Revisited: Unplugged & Lonesome. It was a live-in-studio and acoustic reinterpretation of the original tracks.
I haven’t even touched on the success Foster has enjoyed placing his songs with other artists. He songs have sold over 50 million copies around the globe. Foster is a member of the Texas Heritage Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.
If you have not heard this entire album, swear at the devil and give it a listen.
Radney’s “Nobody Wins” was the second great country song with that title.
The first was by Kristofferson, made most famous, perhaps in a pop version by Sinatra in his 1973 “comeback” album.
Time for me to swear at the devil! For as much critical love as this album gets, I’ve never listened to it in full. It’s long past time to fix that.
Love this record! A while back I listened to Clint Black interview Darius Rucker on his podcast and he mentioned that Rodney Foster was who got him into country music. I was tickled by an acclaimed songwriter and a singer with modest success being the major influence of a modern genre star who crossed over from the non-country sphere.
To expand on CJ Ellis’ share, Rucker shared in his 2024 memoir “Life’s Too Short,” co-written by Foster and Alan Eisenstock, that “Radney Foster makes me hear my voice.” Rucker was first initially blown away by hearing Foster & Lloyd after seeing the video for “Crazy Over You” on CMT. He shared listening to Foster’s solo debut changed his life. He basically wanted to be Radney Foster. Foster, in turn, has said, “I remember the first time I heard Waylon Jennings sing “The Only Daddy That Will Walk the Line.” I had to pull the car over.It was like, ‘maaaaaaannnn, that’s the hippest thing I ever heard. I’m trying to accomplish feelings like that. That’s my mission in life; that’s my job description.”
Jennings to Foster to Rucker.
Peter, this has long been one of my favorite records. I never get tired of it. For me shockingly nobody wins is my least favorite song but I enjoy all 10 tracks. An easy 5 star record and one of the best 90s country records. Some days it is for me
This album is unquestionably one of the greatest solo debut albums of all time. An absolute masterpiece.
Beyond what’s already been said, to cite a few of my favorites from the record, kiss-off songs don’t get much if any better than ”Don’t Say Goodbye,” and the situation detailed in ”A Fine Line”…I mean, talk about a touchy subject, that Foster lays uncomfortably, disturbingly bare. ”Gave his heart to two women, only one wears his ring, they’re both gonna have his babies now.” That one hit me like a freight train when I first heard it. Wow. And ”Louisiana Blue”…not real sure about some of the lyrics there — those muddy bayous run just as black as Coca-Cola,” whaaaat? — but damned if that shuffle beat doesn’t make my traditionalist heart sing every damn time I hear it.
I still want to know why the hell Entertainment Weekly gave this album a “C-“. They were usually pretty kind to country albums, but sometimes they really missed the mark.
I’ve always been a huge fan of “Nobody Wins”, and “Hammer and Nails” is a stunning deep cut. I’d have loved to hear more Radney on the radio as a singer, but getting some stunning albums in the Dualtone era and late-period success as writer of “A Real Fine Place to Start” and “I’m In” weren’t bad consolation prizes.
Radney’s version of ”A Real Fine Place to Start” was great, as was ”Everyday Angel” from that same album.
”Dave was gonna meet his wife at a coffee shop in Brooklyn, when he heard the alarm sing out….”
There were some good albums after the Dualtone era as well, IMO, especially 2009’s Revival.
A 1993 issue of “CD Review’s Guide to New Country Music” had a a three-star review of “Del Rio, TX 1959” that read: “In spite of the autobiographical album title and the fact that Foster had a hand in writing all 10 tunes, the material doesn’t sound all that personal, or even meaningful. He might have made a more assertive album had he tried to put a little more of himself in it.”
Foster did continue to release strong albums and sound great vocally throughout; his debut just resonates most strongly with me. Timing matters for so much.
I agree that this is a great album! I’ve always loved “Nobody Wins”, of course, but I remember that one of our local country stations would spotlight an album one day a week and this album was the one spotlighted on one of those weeks. It was before I had money to purchase music of my own, so I lived for the days when I could record the spotlighted albums. And Radney’s stood out to me as an album that I was glad to be able to record and wished I could own the real copy of.