The Musical Box

john michael montgomery: time flies

The title of John Michael Montgomery’s new album could be viewed as a comment on the four years that have passed since the Central Kentucky country hero last issued an album. But the instant the wiry steel guitar licks and brassy bravado on the opening What Did I Do kick the honky tonk fervor into gear, you sense Montgomery’s music has not changed a fraction as much as the marketing behind it. That’s to say that Time Flies is Montgomery’s first recording as a free agent after 12 years of hit major label recordings for Warner Bros. and Atlantic. As the inaugural release on Montgomery’s own Stringtown label, what sits in the grooves is familiar, welcoming country-pop from the electric barroom twang of Mad Cowboy Disease to All in a Day, a ballad that sports one of Montgomery’s most honestly plaintive vocal performances in ages. Only With My Shirt On, a yarn about encountering romance with a middle age spread, falls flat - and that’s due more to the low aim of the lyrics than Montgomery’s singing. Longtime ally Byron Gallimore remains at the production helm with Montgomery, giving Time Flies a confident sheen that is radio friendly and then some. But making an imprint on country radio as an indie act is always a tough task. Add to that radio’s increasing indifference to many veteran artists and the road back to the country Top 10 may be a long one for Montgomery. But commercial estimations aside, Time Flies is a confident, consistent work that stands up to anything the airwaves currently have to offer.

There were signs on their 2006 album Some People Change that hometown country heroes Eddie Montgomery and Troy Gentry might be settling down. A little. Not so on Back When I Knew It All. While the very Byrds-like title tune hints at life that outlasted a youth run on “beer and gasoline half a lap ahead of the law,” much of the album is fueled by higher octane stuff that is vastly less apologetic. The party starts not in a roadhouse, but in a foot stomping mountainside church service with a taste for snake handling and a preacher on the verge of spontaneous combustion. “He ain’t sure and we ain’t sure exactly what he said,” sings Gentry over screams of slide guitar on The Revival. “So praise the lord and pass me a copperhead.” Can’t wait to see the video for that one. Similarly raucous but vastly less frightful is I Pick My Parties, a middle age manual for mid-week revelry sung with Toby Keith (who Montgomery Gentry will tour extensively with this summer), and One in Every Crowd, which neatly countrifies a David Bowie/Alice Cooper guitar riff as it honors the sort of one-man audience annoyance most folks would opt to clobber if given license. In short, Back When I Knew It All is electric business as usual for our Kentucky pals as it returns to a rowdier framework while keeping a wary eye on the age factor.