Jim Dickinson

Though billed to James Luther Dickinson, this is the same Southern roots rock musician who most rock fans know as multi-instrumentalist Jim Dickinson. He's the lead singer (and co-producer) on this record, but only wrote one of the dozen songs. The others were drawn from diverse sources like Doug Sahm, the Green on Red side project Howard Hughes' Brain, a member of his backup band, and several obscure songwriters who Dickinson's met and worked with in his various travels. Unsurprisingly, it's a stew of down-home blues, country, gospel, and R&B, though woven together in such a manner that makes it more easily classifiable as rock than as any of those specific genres. Dickinson's droll, irreverent humor is reflected in his delivery of some of the material, though some of it's also infused with a sense of wizened resignation (and, in some of the more romantically inclined tunes, desperation). Maybe it's because Dickinson's appearances as a Rolling Stones session man are his most well-known credits, but some of the tracks can't fail to bring to mind the Stones in their more subdued, even low-energy moods. That, however, highlights a difference between this and the Stones: that group has a master vocalist, and Dickinson's singing is only gruffly functional. Even though it's a solo album, it might have been better had a more expressive and supple singer been taking most or all of the leads, with Dickinson focusing on the multi-instrumentation and production that are his chief strengths. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide