Rusty Trucks Kicker Town - A Better Late Than Never Review: Rusty Truck is a the name of Mark Seligers musical side project. Some of you will know Mark through his work as a photographer for fifteen years with Rolling Stone - the last ten as Chief Photographer. A year after leaving Rolling Stone, Mark released the first Rusty Truck CD, Broken Promises. While it might have been easy to ignore the effort as just another vanity project, Mark Seliger is the real deal. Born in Amarillo TX and raised in Houston, Marks love of music, particularly Texas particular brand of Country, goes back to those childhood days. In fact, Mark and I played briefly in a band together - we lived three blocks apart and attended Elementary, Jr. High, and the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts together, where I was a Theatre major and Mark majored in Media Arts. Mark has apparently dabbled in songwriting over the years, occasionally playing for friends. It was the urging of friends, Jakob Dylan and Lenny Kravitz, that led him into the studio in 2003, resulting in a full length CD of collaborative performances of Marks original compositions. Each song features different producers and guest artists, including Jakob Dylan & Rami Jaffee, T-Bone Burnett, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Willie Nelson & Mickey Raphael, Andres Levin, Meshell Ndegeocello, Sheryl Crow, Rob Thomas and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. The result was a very listenable record throughout with some truly breakout tracks. I just recently discovered that Rusty Truck had released a followup, recorded in 2011 and, presumably, released in 2012 (there is no copyright date on the CD). I ordered a copy from Amazon and received it today. (Note: they also have a 2008 release titled Lucks Changing Lanes, featuring many of the songs on Broken Promises. I dont know if they are re-releases or new recordings). Kicker Town is truly a Rusty Truck record, all the tracks recorded by the band, with occasional guest players, produced by Andres Levin and Nick Brophy, who also recorded and mixed Kicker Town. As a recording and live sound engineer myself, I particularly appreciate that Nick is listed along with the other band members for sound and mixing. Kicker Town is an eleven song collection of Seliger originals and features a mix of songs that are undeniably Mark, while also demonstrating his ability to craft songs that are immediately memorable and undeniably country. Its All Good could easily have been a honky-tonk hit for Merle Haggard or Georg Strait. Good as Gone and Rattle Trucks both could easily be Contemporary Country hits. Not a slave to formula, tracks such as Buildings and Blood Brothers do not sound like anyone else - they are uniquely Seliger - and I mean that in a good way! Mark Seliger tells stories with his voice and guitar as well as he does with his camera. If you are a fan of country music, go on Amazon or iTunes to check it out and, if you like it, buy it for petes sake. For my HSPVA friends, there is another connection for us. Many of you will remember the days when Scott Gertners band played at Remingtons. The guitarist was Jerry McPherson, who moved on to Nashville and played with Amy Grants band for many years. Jerry has been a much sought after session player over the years and his guitar work can be heard all over this record. amazon/Kicker-Town-Rusty-Truck/dp/B00CSB31TQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1412292725&sr=1-1&keywords=rusty+truck
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 23:47:08 +0000
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