Startin' with Me (CD - 2006)

Personnel: Jake Owen; Jimmy Ritchey (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, baritone guitar, mandolin); Brent Mason (acoustic guitar, electric guitar); B. James Lowry (acoustic guitar); David Grissom, Pat Buchanan (electric guitar); Paul Franklin (steel guitar, lap steel guitar, dobro); Jonathan Yudkin (violin, viola, cello, strings); Larry Franklin (fiddle); Jelly Roll Johnson (harmonica); Kenny Aronoff (drums); Eric Darken (percussion); John Wesley Ryles, Lisa Cochran, Wes Hightower (background vocals); Randy Owen.

Audio Mixers: Clarke Schleicher; Jeff Balding.

Recording information: Blackbird Studios, Nashville, TN; Fox Ridge Studios, Brentwood, TN; Ocean Way Studios, Nashville, TN; OmniSound Studios, Nashville, TN; SOund Kitchen, Franklin, TN; Westlake Studios, Nashville, TN; Westwood Studios, Los Angeles, CA.

24-year-old country singer Jake Owen debuts with the self-assured--and largely self-written--STARTIN' WITH ME, a solid example of contemporary Nashville country that doesn't neglect its traditional roots. Neither as slick as Keith Urban nor as rock-influenced as Muzik Mafia types like Big & Rich or Gretchen Wilson, the Florida-born Owen is a contemporary analogue to the New Traditionalists of the 1980s. Though the debut single "Yee Haw" and the rebel-rousing album closer "You Can Thank Dixie" kick up a Toby Keith-style roadhouse fuss, old-school ballads like "Ghosts" are Owen's strong suit.

A Nashville country rebel in the mold of Travis Tritt -- in other words, a defanged and marketing-driven pretty boy whose punkin head David Allan Coe or Waylon Jennings would smash a beer bottle over just on general principle -- Jake Owen makes his debut with the utterly formulaic Startin' with Me. Opening tracks "Bad in Me" and "Yee Haw" try so desperately hard to establish Owen's image as a bad-ass hellraiser that they finally become comical, and not the knowingly self-mocking Big & Rich kind of comical, either. Every note on Startin' with Me is as perfectly placed as Owen's artfully mussed hair in the reg'lar joe glamour shot on the front cover. Owen and producer Jimmy Ritchey carefully check off all the country radio clichés: Drinking ballad? Check! Cry for the good Lord's deliverance? You betcha! Leering misogyny disguised as praise for the female of the species? Got yer "Something About a Woman" right here, pal! Naturally, something so perfectly contrived can't help but be at least modestly successful on a commercial level. ~ Stewart Mason minimize