bass fiddle - john abbey
vocal and guitar - robbie fulks
vocal - kelly hogan
mandolin and fiddle - don stiernberg

Whatever conviction I have given this comes from my love for Dudley Connell's singing and for the state of Virginia, particularly the part of the Blue Ridge Mountains around Waynesboro and Charlottesville where I used to live as a boy (but those Technicolor hues continue up all the way to Washington and southwest toward Johnson City).

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - k.c. mcdonough
electric guitar and clavinet - scott ligon
vocal and electric guitar- robbie fulks
backing vocals - scott ligon and k.c. mcdonough

My band and I played a couple middle-age weddings in 2007. Why not, I thought, have a song for people who wait until almost too late? Those couples seem more laid-back and realistic than many of their younger counterparts. Still, as this song implies, I wonder whether taking the pledge after many years of dodging grown-up commitment requires a bigger leap of faith and, concomitantly, some stricter language ("stay married").

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - john abbey
electric guitar and fiddle - john rice
vocal and acoustic guitar - robbie fulks
steel guitar - brian wilkie

More on the tragically irrevocable past; in this song, the narrator's success in life has necessarily alienated him from his upbringing and driven a wedge between his kids' values and his own. A few of the details, like the goat, are cribbed from life, but most of them are imaginary or highly embellished.

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - john abbey
organ - scott ligon
acoustic guitar and vocal - robbie fulks
banjo - danny barnes
backing vocals - steve dawson and ingrid graudins

The Tim McGraw-Nelly duet was a model for something that, if only on grounds of musical curiosity, should be happening more -- a dedicated tilling of the common land shared by the blackest of the black music and the whitest of the white. The plot might've been wider in the Ray Charles days, back when the integration thing was in. Keith Gattis's use of the banjo in a world-weary soft-rock groove made me think of using it here. The backing by Steve Dawson and Ingrid Graudins is very good, and in some ways the karaoke version that engineer O'Rourke made me, erasing me and lifting them, is the better one.

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - k.c. mcdonough
acoustic guitar and vocal - robbie fulks
electric guitar - grant tye
steel guitar - brian wilkie
other voices - grant tye, jay o'rourke

Man! I feel like a dude.

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - mike fredrickson
electric guitar - scott ligon
acoustic guitar and vocal - robbie fulks
backing vocals - k.c. mcdonough and robbie fulks

O'Rourke remarked during mix, "He needs to do an NRBQ tribute record where he plays every instrument." Scott Ligon plays only the guitar on this one, sounding more like Big Al than Rich Little sounds like Nixon. My favorite part of his soloing is the time-busting one-note stutter toward the end. I won't bore the public anymore with boasts of my illimitable fealty to the 'Q.

acoustic guitar and vocal - robbie fulks
vocal - kelly hogan
mandolin - don stiernberg
bass fiddle - john abbey

This is the country curmudgeon song where Kelly felt compelled to "stroke the ladybeard" whilst singing.

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - mike fredrickson
electric guitar - grant tye
acoustic guitar and vocal - robbie fulks
keyboard - chris neville
backing vocals - amy warren, k.c. mcdonough,
mike fredrickson, ingrid graudins

A high school friend died suddenly in 2007 and I started this song in her memory. Then "Joan," her name, turned to "Jane," and gradually things got farther away from the spark. As it stands, it's about the fallout from a hookup, and has some whimsical word-association lyrics; but to the subtler extent that it's still about the hole chopped in your landscape by human disappearance, it still concerns Joan, and I think of her when I'm singing it.

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - john abbey
electric guitar (first solo) and piano - scott ligon
electric guitar (second solo), vocal, and backing vocals - robbie fulks

This one evolved from a high-school career day talk I gave in 2006, also memorialized as an essay in the country-troubadour prose collection "A Guitar and A Pen." The piano riffs are as scattered and infrequent as they are because Scott was high that night and not really feeling it, continuously. I like both our guitar solos.

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - k.c. mcdonough
electric guitar and piano - scott ligon
baritone guitar and vocal - robbie fulks

My son and father-in-law were teamed for the twelfth season of the CBS series "The Amazing Race," in which contestants dash around the planet finding clues and taking on challenges until the last one left standing is awarded a million bucks. This Carl Perkins-y thing refers breezily to their teammates and experiences as if everyone in the world knows what the hell I'm discussing...just smile and play along.

acoustic guitar and vocal - robbie gjersoe
acoustic guitar and vocal - robbie fulks

One of the best of the fifty, in my opinion, in terms of overall effect of the recorded performance. I frequently seem to find myself headed to the airport in Houston or Dallas at 6PM Sunday morning, bleary and a little melancholy, and I guess that's why I put this sad fellow in that place.

drumkit, turntable and vocal - gerald dowd
bass guitar and vocal - lorne rall
electric guitar and vocal - grant tye
piano, organ, and vocal - joe terry
clavinet - pat brennan
vocal - robbie fulks

This J5 cover is one of my favorites from my rumored Michael Jackson tribute album (circa 2000). Dig Lorne Rall as Marlon!