ARTIST: Blue Mountain
TITLE: Home Grown
YEAR RELEASED: 1997
CHART ACTION: #None
SINGLES: None
OTHER SONGS YOU MAY KNOW: Not really, but you should have.
LINEUP: Carey Hudson, Laurie Stirratt, Frank Couch
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT: A true alt-country record, with straight country songs and stomping rockers.
SOME WORDS, PHRASES AND CLAUSES ABOUT THIS RECORD: Carey Hudson is a country boy with rock-and-roll in his heart, and his band (with his then wife Laurie Stirratt), combined both genres in one of the purest alt-country bands going in the 90’s.
From rockers like “Generic America” (probably the best track on the album), to country ballads like “Myrna Lee”, and testimonies to dangerous two-lane roads found in the South (“Bloody 98”), Hudson and company mix and match country and rock, especially in a track like “Last Words of Midnight Clyde”.
The issue is that the album seems front-loaded, with the back half concentrating on the mellower acoustic-based songs that let a bit of the fire out of the record. The sequencing makes this just a good album, not great.
NOTES & MINUTIAE: They were on Roadrunner Records for this release, which is unusual since that company normally releases Heavy Metal albums.
IS THERE A DELUXE VERSION: No.
GRADE: B+: It would be an A- with better sequencing.