On Grammy morning this year, I was flipping past one of my town's many Hot

New Country outlets when I heard the DJ mention Junior Brown, who was a

country Album Of The Year nominee that night for his EP (go figure) Junior

High. The DJ was talking to a gal on the phone, and she was hot. "I can't

believe that crap has been nominated for anything," she said.

"Whenever his irritating voice and that stupid video of his come on

Country Music Television I flip fast. As far as I'm concerned, he's not

even country music." For what it's worth, her favorite station must have

agreed. The only time it ever played Junior Brown that I know of was that

very morning--in order to make fun of Junior Brown and "his weird, weird

music," as the DJ later put it.

This sad little anecdote speaks volumes about just how far current country

radio has come from its twangy, working-people roots. Today, the musical

tradition of Sarah Carter and Hank Williams, Sr. and Merle Haggard has

been left in the hands of Garth and Shania and several dozen pretty boys

named Ty, all of whom would rather be (easy) listening to Dan Fogleberg or

the Eagles than "The Wild Side Of Life." But just because radio has given

up on country music doesn't mean you should--especially since there's a

bumper crop of super country acts out there who are just too durn country

to get on country radio. Name any trad' country sound you want, and more

than likely there's some true-believer out there carrying on the

tradition. Wayne Hancock (Hank Williams honky tonk), The Derailers (Buck

Owens honky tonk), BR5-49 (Johnny Horton honky tonk), The Dave & Deke

Combo (Delmore Brothers harmonies over Ernie Ford country-boogie), Big

Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys (very early Elvis plus Hank Thompson country

swing), and Dale Watson (Bakersfield honky tonk, with shots of Outlaw) are

only some of the better-known acts in this rapidly growing field.

Still, with this Grammy nomination and with a growing rep' for killer live

performances, Junior Brown is far and away the best known of this group.

Featuring a deep baritone that sounds something like Ernest Tubb on

steroids, and dressing in brown suits that look as if they came straight

out of the Jimmy Carter years, Brown has gone his own way, playing

unironic and unreconstructed honky tonk in an uptempo style that borrows

heavily from the 10960s trucker classics of legends like Dave Dudley, Red

Simpson (who joins Junior here on the title track) and Del Reeves. You

wouldn't mistake Junior for George Strait in a line-up. But even if Brown

were just another hat act, he'd still stand out in the crowd, thanks to

his trademark guit-steel, a jimmy-rigged deal that basically welds

together an electric and a steel guitar and that balances atop a converted

music stand as Brown rips and mugs through solo after jaw-dropping solo.

And, boy oh boy, can he get a rockin' twang out of that thing! His newest

release, Semi Crazy (a pun that combines Brown's unconventional

style with his love for big rigs), shows off his guit-steel chops and

modernizes old-school country sounds in much the same fashion as his two

previous full-length discs. The ol' guit-steel really smokes on a bluesy,

Stevie Ray Vaughan-influenced rocker ("I Hung It Up"), an extended,

show-stopping instrumental (a medley of "Pipeline," "Walk, Don't Run" and

"Secret Agent Man"), and several tragi-comic honky-tonkers about loves

both good ("Darlin' I'll Do Anything You Say"), bad ("Gotta Get Up Every

Morning"), and deadly ("Venom Wearing Denim").

Unfortunately, Brown has done all of this before, and on 1993's Guit

With It, he generally did it much better (For example, that album's

show-stopping instrumental, a cover of Hank Garland's "Sugarfoot Rag,"

blows by Junior's new "Surf Medley" like it was standing still.). The

problem faced by any artist as idiosyncratic as Brown is that what

originally sounds like a distinctive style has the potential to devolve

into the same old-same old, or even shtick. If he ain't careful, Brown's

trademark voice and instrument could begin to sound like just a couple of

good ol' boy gimmicks. To his credit, Brown seems aware of this problem,

though his attempts to deal with it here don't always succeed. The piano-,

rather than guit-, driven "Hong Kong Blues" (an old Hoagie Carmichael

number) is, in theory, a jazzy little change of pace for Junior. In

practice, though, his rendition winds up sounding like a novelty cross

between "Chopsticks" and Leon Redbone. This is not a good thing. Much more

promising is his take on "I Want To Hear It From You," a trad-country

weeper similar to many Brown's done before but one that, for once, he has

decided can do without an over-the-top, spotlight-grabbing guit-steel

solo. Even better is the subtle terror of "Parole Board," where a prisoner

decides he's going to "let the Good Lord take me home" if he doesn't

finally get set free. On both of these sad ballads, Brown chooses to place

the emphasis where it should be--on the song and on Brown's wonderfully

unique voice.

Such fine-tuning bodes well for Brown the artist, suggesting that there's

more to his future than just another round of guit-steel pyrotechnics. And

for all those Hot New Country radio fans who think he's a twangy,

crap-playing weirdo, Brown offers "Joe The Singing Janitor." The kids are

"making fun of my cornball singing voice and the real square way I dress,"

he sings, but adds defiantly that "I really don't care if you think I'm a

square." If you genuinely like country music--old-school style--you won't

care either.