Whats Wrong with Right

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Song Title Time Price 2:56 $0.99 3:02 $0.99 4:32 $0.99 Visit our audio page for more information The Hacienda Brothers, led by cult heroes Chris Gaffney and Dave Gonzalez, introduced their wood-smoked blend of stone country and old-school R&B on their self-titled 2004 debut album, helmed by legendary writer/producer Dan Penn. The record was made in Tucson, where both of the principals, who now reside in Southern California, have roots, so people took to describing the group’s sound as "western soul." The term not only stuck, it proved to be inspirational when the Haciendas and Penn reconvened in the picturesque Arizona city for the follow-up effort, What’s Wrong With Right (Proper American Records), because the album vividly captures the new/old genre brought about by the pairing of Gaffney, Gonzalez and Penn. The drop-dead gorgeous title song — one of the record’s several instant classics—marks the second time Gonzalez and Penn have written together, following the first album’s soulful "Looking for Loneliness." Dave has known Penn since 1998, when they met at a European festival between sets by and Penn and partner Spooner Oldham and Gonzalez’s Paladins. They share a love of everything automotive, but the guitarist remains in awe of Penn as a songwriter. Before their first collaboration, Gonzalez recalls that Penn told him, "I got three rules: I don’t do nothin’ over the phone, I don’t do nothin’ over the mail and I don’t do nothin’ over the Internet. I’m into hangin’ out." It turned out that Penn was particularly into hangin’ out in Tucson, which was one of the attractions of working with the Haciendas. The meeting of the minds amid mountains and desert proved to be fruitful for all concerned. See all Reader Reviews The Hacienda Brothers - Dave Gonzalez of The Paladins and Chris Gaffney of Dave Alvin's Guilty Men - hook up with Southern soul master Dan Penn for their second album in two years. The duo's varied background in blues, rockabilly, country and tex-mex is here, but the glue holding it together is the Memphis soul of producer and songwriter Penn. In addition to revisiting two of Penn's classics, "Cry Like a Baby" and "It Tears Me Up" (originally waxed by The Box Tops and Percy Sledge, respectively), Gonzalez and Penn co-wrote the soul-with-pedal-steel title track, and Gonzalez & Gaffney were inspired to write several more stone soul classics. But even that wasn't enough, as the trio visits the catalogs of Gamble & Huff ("Cowboys to Girls") and Charlie Rich ("Life's Little Ups and Downs") for more country/soul infusions. If the songlist itself is impressive, the performance is even more so. Gaffney's raspy vocals fit the soulful tenor of these songs, and with Joe Terry's organ and Gonzalez's fluid guitar playing behind him, the Hacienda's recreate the emotional impact of Dan Penn's Muscle Shoals work without mimicking the original sounds. Where they differ, and where they refrain from simply copying what Penn had laid out before, is with the inclusion of loping western rhythms and twangy guitar picking. The alchemy is how the album indulges Gonzalez's country jones, but as southern soul, rather than as The Paladins rockabilly inflections. One might look to Joe South as an antecedent, but where South brought then-contemporary pop influences into his southern background, the Hacienda's bring the West. Best of all, they can move in both directions: the Memphis soul of "It Tears Me Up" is augmented with pedal steel, while Gonzalez' honky-tonk two-step "The Last Time" is topped with Gaffney's soul-drenched vocal. The originals mix with the covers so thoroughly that the opening original "Midnight Dream" sounds like a cover of long-lost Atlantic single, Charlie Rich's "Rebound" takes an original turn with a Lousiana bounce, and the originals "Different Today" and "The Warning" seem to shuffle right out of the Waylon Jennings catalog. This is a masterful release that charts new ground between soul and country, and a textbook example of how a brilliant producer can amplify a band's innate magnificence. [©2006 redtunictroll at hotmail dot com]  Comment | Permalink |  (Report this) Back To Top