Horse of a Different Color (CD - 2004)

Additional personnel: Martina McBride, Gretchen Wilson, Cowboy Troy, Jon Nicholson.

Producers: Big Kenny, John Rich, Paul Worley.

Big & Rich: John Rich (vocals, acoustic guitar); Big John (vocals).

Additional personnel: Adam Shoenfield (electric guitar); Mike Johnson (steel guitar); Nicole Summers (flute); Michael Rojas (keyboards); Matt Pierson (bass instrument); Wayne Killius (drums); Gretchen Wilson, Martina McBride (background vocals).

Audio Mixer: Bart Pursley.

Recording information: ATV Studios, Nashville, TN; Blackbird Studio; Dark Horse Recording; LOUD Recording; Sony; Starstruck Studios; The MOney Pit.

Photographer: Glen Rose.

Like many professional country musicians, the duo of Big & Rich -- Big being Kenny Alphin, while Rich is John Rich, a former singer for Lonestar -- are based in Nashville, but that doesn't mean they follow all the conventions of Music City. In fact, they throw conventions out the window on their 2004 debut album, Horse of a Different Color. They can certainly craft a kicking country song, as the backwoods ballad "Deadwood Mountain" proves, but they don't settle for that, preferring to spike predictable song structures with considerable doses of goofy humor or, better still, to fly beyond genre and concoct gonzo amalgams of country, arena rock, and rap. All of this makes Big & Rich hard to peg, particularly because they come across as a big-boned, country variation of Tenacious D or Ween -- talented musical pranksters who treat everything as a lark, but have the musical skills to back up their boasts. Like the D, they even have a theme song in "Rollin' (The Ballad of Big & Rich)" -- which bizarrely enough sounds a bit like Tenacious D, which isn't nearly as bizarre as how the melody of "Wild West Show" recalls Nirvana's "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" -- and they have no compunctions about being flat-out silly, which is good, since that silliness brought them a big novelty hit in "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)," a song designed for drunken shout-alongs in sports bars. Much of Horse of a Different Color plays to that audience, but the surprise is that the rowdiness is tongue-in-cheek and that Big & Rich are musically clever, filling the record with big hooks and unbridled weirdness. Not that all of this is successful -- it can sound too goofy at points -- but it's wilder and stranger than most contemporary country albums of 2004, and a whole lot more fun, to boot. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Listening to any number of the slick chart-busters produced by the Nashville machine, one might wonder what would happen if all those immensely talented musicians and songwriters were left to their own devices, entirely free from commercial restraints. HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR presents a definitive and immensely enjoyable answer.

Comprised of ex-Lonestar lead vocalist/bassist John Rich and longtime Nashville songwriter/scenester Big Kenny, Big & Rich stake a claim as country music's counterpart to They Might Be Giants (or perhaps even Frank Zappa), combining a dizzying array of styles and unorthodox lyrical subject matter with gleeful abandon. Charging out of the gate with a song that borrows from Limp Bizkit and prominently features Cowboy Troy, "the world's only six-foot, five-inch, 250-pound black cowboy rapper," the album careens from Jimmy Buffet-like party anthems ("Big Time") to AC/DC-influenced, double-entendre-laden rockers ("Save a Horse [Ride a Cowboy]"). Luckily, the incredibly high caliber of musicianship and unwavering creative spirit keep the record from ever slipping into parody. Instead, Big & Rich have single-handedly created a new hybrid genre that promises to inspire a host of similarly inclined free spirits. minimize