Labor of Love, Sammy Kershaw's 1997 album, kicks things off with a Bob McDill song, "Honky Tonk America," a celebration of every dimly lit, beer-soaked nightclub in the nation--"a blue-collar place" with "a red-blooded crowd." And what kind of music, according to Kershaw and McDill, should one expect to hear in today's honky-tonk? "Louie, Louie," "Proud Mary," and "Wooly Bully." As much as country purists may hate to hear it, today's Southern factory worker, the sort of person who's the backbone of the country audience, is more likely to dance to "Wooly Bully" on a Friday night than to "New San Antonio Rose." Kershaw is part of that core audience and so it's only natural that his Labor of Love reflects as much rock influence as country roots. Only purists would fault Kershaw for adding cannon-shot snare drums and cranked-up guitars to the fiddles and pedal-steel guitar, especially when these backing tracks sound as good as they do. Still, this set, like Kershaw's previous albums, is unfailingly polite. His voice is a marvelous instrument, and it sounds thick and creamy whether it comes out slow and sad, or fast and funny. The songs are all built around clever puns and catchy chorus jingles, but they never go any deeper than that. On the album's most country-sounding track, "Thank God, You're Gone," Kershaw and his cowriter Mike Fornes describe a romantic break-up with a captivating ballad melody and the usual lyric details. The singer captures the self-pity of the situation in a gorgeous vocal, but he never quite touches the depths of post-break-up despair where anger, regret, and yearning are tangled in an undoable knot. --Geoffrey Himes
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