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.
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