THE LINER NOTES

 

There is a sense of completeness when an artist returns to the music that formed them, that shaped and defined the life they were born to and found lasting joy in.

 

Lynn Anderson was born to, and in, the saddle. Her early raisings on the eastern prairies of North Dakota notwithstanding, she was a woman of the West…as true and real a cowgirl as the legions of wannabes that followed in her bootsteps tried in vain to be. Long before a fateful night in Nashville turned into a career that carried her to the top of the entertainment world, she was a star; one of the country’s most accomplished and lauded cutting horse champions. A bonafide horsewoman whose love for the rodeo life was eclipsed only by her love for the music that echoed its romanticism.

 

In this twenty-ninth release of her career, Lynn returns to that music, and its influence on her is evident in virtually every groove. A ten-song collection that balances a short stack of contemporary tracks with some of Western music’s most iconic melodies. Patsy Montana’s seminal "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" leads off the set at a gallop, a vibrant and rich vocal from Lynn transforming the bucolic, yodel-laced standard into a line dancers dream that drives across the melody like a stampede. And the high lonesome feel of the traditional lament, “Red River Valley” is upgraded to a fiddles-strung two-step that would make Bob Wills proud. Then, moody and intimate, she takes on Glen Frey’s “Desperado”, and conjures up the image of a woman who has been there…done that; who’s held love in her hand, and let it go.

 

But it’s the album’s one and only duet that shines brightest in this brilliant release; a cinematic reimagining of the western classic, “The Wayward Wind”; blending Lynn with the legendary Emmylou Harris; their voices perfectly tuned to an Everly Brothers consonance that comes close to blood harmony. A rare and important chapter in the musical legacy of Lynn Anderson: cowboy’s sweetheart.

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J Buck Ford