Journeyman singer/songwriter
Bob Cheevers relocated to Austin, TX, an appropriate residence for a performer who writes and performs in a country/folk/rock style similar to many Texas songwriters, and he celebrates his new home state on this album, paying his respects in such selections as the name-dropping rocker "Texas Is an Only Child," one of those names being that of Texas native
Willie Nelson, to whom
Cheevers bears a vocal similarity so close he could front a
Nelson tribute band without any strain. The album's title turns out to be deceptive; there isn't actually much in the way of tall Texas tales here. In "Budget Motel," Cheevers sings, "I don't know if it's true, this story I tell, but it happened to me," yet the only story he tells is about a man on the road who stops in a motel for the night, dreams of his lover, and leaves in the morning. "Mushroom Cloud Lil" nearly answers to the description of a tall tale set in Texas, claiming that J. Robert Oppenheimer, developer of the atom bomb in Los Alamos, NM, had a daughter who was "the real atom bomb," but that's the only song that even comes close to justifying the album title. (The
Bo Diddley rocker "One Good Rib" is a retelling of the story of Genesis, which Texas fundamentalists would not consider "tall" at all, and anyway, the Garden of Eden wasn't in Texas, was it?) Nevertheless,
Cheevers does deliver a collection of good songs in a variety of familiar roots styles, and even if he sounds a lot like
Willie Nelson, that's not such a bad thing for a guy to do in Texas. ~ William Ruhlmann