This release is different because the country/rockabilly music that BR-549 does is just made to be heard live. This isn’t them imitating the way their music should sound. This is them doing their music the way it was meant to be done. It’s the genuine article.

The music isn’t the only thing worth listening to on Live From Robert’s. BR-549’s stage banter is better than most bands’ songs.

Instead of hearing Could I have a little more of my guitar in the monitors, and could you turn everyone else down? you get such memorable lines as It’s time to tell you the true story, all about the lost episode of the Andy Griffith show. It’s a particularly heinous story about drug abuse and sexual deviance. Looks like it’s right up your alley, and the ever memorable Kinda sad, kinda pretty, kinda gross.

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They have songs about Betty Page (the bondage and leather pin-up queen), doing drugs with Opie and killing your girlfriend just because you love her so much. And the songs all sound like the music my granddad played, so I’m sold on it.

BR-549 is taking the tried and true techniques of old-style country music, and they make it sound as fresh as when Hank Williams Sr. did it years ago. If you like these guys, then maybe go pick up a Squirrel Nut Zippers, an old Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, or Big Sandy and the Flyright Boys album. Or better yet, go see Full Swing or The Bottletones next time they play around here. There are a lot of people out there continuing old musical traditions, and they are doing new and amazing things with them.

BR-549 is supposed to be playing here in December, so unless I’m dead or in jail I know I’m going to be there.