Reviewed by Sammy Horner

I love good country music, but I've got to level with you, as soon as I saw the title, 'Rodeo Preacher', my heart sank right into my cowboy boots; but then you can't judge a CD by its cover, so I hit the buttons and by the third line of track 1, I had a bad case of "Achy Breaky Heart"! Yep, it's all here, the crying pedal steel, barn dance fiddles, 'heavy on the left hand' piano, and the Roy Rogers, Dale Evans style vocals. All the instruments are what you'd expect, and they're well played, the singing is good, but the songs, well, therein lies the problem. I quote - "I like my straight leg Levis, I like my just in boots!", and it gets worse, "He led cowboys to Jesus, that's how the west was won!". When you consider major talents like Dallas Holm or Gary Hall, and the kind of excellent country music that Ricky Scaggs offers, I'm afraid that this album is left back on the Homestead. If you are a hardened trail boss, you might want to lasso this one and put your brand on it, but for this cowboy, it was one "Yee-haa" short of a good square-dance!

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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