Includes a bonus DVD.
Personnel: Patty Loveless (vocals, guitar); Steve Gibson (acoustic & baritone guitars); Biff Watson (acoustic guitar); Jedd Hughes, Kenny Vaughan, Tom Britt (electric guitar); Russ Pahl (12-string guitar, lap steel, banjo); Al Perkins (steel guitar); Deanie Richardson, Mike Compton, Tim Hensley (mandolin, background vocals); Stuart Duncan (fiddle); Emory Gordy Jr. (bass); Harry Stinson (drums, background vocals); Tim Hensley, Carmella Ramsey, Liana Manis, John Wesley Ryles, Tammy Rogers, Carl Jackson (backgroun vocals).
Recorded at The Sound Kitchen, Franklin, Tennessee.
"On Your Way Home" was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Female
Country Vocal Performance.
Who says country music is dead? Patty Loveless and her producer, husband Emory Gordy, Jr. obviously don't give a damn about what's popular in the morally reprehensible and artistically bankrupt world of Nash Vegas (anti)culture this week. On Your Way Home picks up where the rootsy heart of Loveless' awesome Mountain Soul left off -- with a solid, emotionally moving, honestly delivered set of honest-to-God country songs written by fine contemporary songwriters. These 11 songs lend a glimmering hope that the major labels in the heart of the beast of modern country haven't been totally swallowed by aesthetic greedy blindness. The album opens with "Draggin' My Heart Around," by Paul Kennerley and Marty Stuart, full of guitars -- both acoustic and electric, caressed by a lonesome fiddle and pedal steel, and a honky tonk two-step rhythm. The tale is classic, about a man doing his woman wrong and the woman in near despair, but the delivery is up-tempo and defiant. The old folksy mountain groan that opens "Nothin' but the Lonely," a seemingly transformed old fiddle tune, takes the listener back to a time out of space, a color out of time, a place where the song revealed someone's truth. Not their production values. And then there's that sheen of country boogie and rockabilly in the Al Anderson/Gary Nicholson/Jessie Alexander-penned "I Wanna Believe," driven as much by a pair of fiddles as an electric guitar and a subtle double-time beat. As for ballads, like the title track, leave it to Matraca Berg and whomever she happens to be writing with -- in this case the wonderful Ronnie Samoset -- to deliver the consummate broken yet determined break-up song every time. In Loveless' voice, this song is an issue of profound truth for the protagonist; she is the one waiting up for the lies and excuses. In fact, in each of these songs Loveless offers everyday life as episodic revelation and epiphany. Her voice is a full million miles deep, full of mystery, pathos, and a hard-won tenderness. Nowhere is this more evident than in Roger Brown's Celtic-flavored country waltz "Born Again Fool." Here Loveless is the storyteller, offering both empathy and plainspoken wisdom about a man who actually believes a woman can save him from himself. There is no "I told you so" doublespeak here, and both people in the tale contain elements of victimization and perpetration. The shuffling honky tonk of "Lookin' for a Heartache" -- written by Jim Lauderdale with Buddy and Julie Miller -- swings with pure Texas aplomb. Likewise, Rodney Crowell's "Lovin' All Night" is shuffling, scuffling rootsy rock & roll disguised as up-tempo honky tonk. The final song on the disc, "The Grandpa I Know," is caressed by a dobro and mandolins and falls like a prayer from Loveless' mouth. Turning away from the shell left by a recently departed loved one is disregarded in favor of vibrant, reverent memory. In a lesser singer's voice, this cut might seem corny or superficial; in that loose, untamable grain in Loveless' instrument, it is an epitaph that holds the story of an entire life. Ultimately, On Your Way Home is further proof that in her midforties, Loveless is a singer who has just reached the pinnacle of musical and artistic greatness she has worked so hard for and has become a vocalist entitled to a legacy in the rich lineage of historic country music. It's alive and well in her care. ~ Thom Jurek
Patty Loveless has managed to deftly skirt the line between pop and roots with her particular brand of contemporary country, without alienating either camp. ON YOUR WAY HOME pretty much continues in that vein, but there's possibly a bit more grit between its teeth, as heard in the martial rhythm and choppy mandolin that drive "Nothin' Like the Lonely" or on the stark, scorned-lover ballad "On Your Way Home."
It doesn't hurt that Loveless got some of the hippest writers in Nashville to contribute material either. The sassy shuffle "Looking for a Heartache like You" was penned by no less esteemed an assemblage than Buddy & Julie Miller and Jim Lauderdale, and the churning roadhouse boogie "Lovin' All Night" comes from the pen of country cult hero Rodney Crowell. A traditional country thread can be ascertained in the bluegrass-touched melody of "Nothin' Like the Lonely," the barroom-ballad feel of "Last in a Long Lonesome Line," and the surprising predominance of acoustic instruments throughout the album, providing a pleasing marriage of polish and soul. minimize