Always & Forever (CD - 1987)

Personnel: Randy Travis (vocals); Steve Gibson, Brent Mason (acoustic & electric guitars); Larry Byrom, Mark Casstevens, Russell Barenberg (acoustic guitar); Doyle Grisham (steel guitar); Jerry Douglas (dobro); Paul Franklin (pedal dobro); Mark O'Connor (fiddle); Terry McMillan (harmonica, percussion); "Jelly Roll" Johnson (harmonica); Dennis Burnside (keyboards); David Hungate, Jack Williams (bass); Larry Londin, James Stroud (drums); Sherri Huffman, Lisa Silver, Diane Tidwell, Dennis Locorriere, Paul Overstreet, Dennis Wilson (background vocals).

Baillie & The Boys: Kathy Baillie, Michael Brook, Alan LeBoeuf (background vocals).

Engineers: Joe Bogan, Marshall Morgan, Kyle Lehning, Kirt Odle.

Recorded at StarGem, Audio Media and Morningstar Sound Studio, Nashville, Tennessee.

Travis's sophomore album for Warners was an enormous hit (five million copies sold its first year) and with good reason. It stayed in the same neo-traditionalist vein of STORMS OF LIFE, with a similar mix of cry in your beer weepers and up-tempo neo-honky-tonk workouts, but with even better crafted songs; interestingly, one of the best of them, the family values tribute "My House," is co-written by someone named Al Gore (no relation, apparently). Other highlights include Dennis Linde's defiantly blue collar love song "What'll You Do About Me," and the humongous hit "Forever and Ever, Amen" a fiendishly catchy mid-tempo declaration of eternal love that Travis digs into with characteristic George Jones derived clench-jawed passion. minimize