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DARRYL LEE RUSH
Live From The River Road Icehouse
(Palo Duro)

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- Dallas' Darryl Lee Rush has been playing roadhouses and honky-tonks all over Texas for nearly a decade, but he didn't get around to recording his marvelous debut, Llano Avenue, until 2005. He does his best work onstage, though, so it was a natural choice to make his sophomore effort primarily a live release.

And yet it's the two studio tracks which bookend the live cuts that really stand out here. "Lot" and "Shotgun Annie" are the type of character studies that benefit from Rush's detailed eye for the ins-and-outs of the rural experience. "Behind these doors, there's not much worth taking/but I guess it's her lot in life," he sings on "Lot", examining a meager existence of a woman living paycheck-to-paycheck in a ramshackle trailer.

"Town Too Tough To Die" leads off the live material, and Rush's fiery band blazes a trail that leaves both performer and audience nearly out of breath. Included in the rowdy portion of the set is a cover of Steve Earle's "Johnny Come Lately" that suits Rush's everyman persona just right. When he gets to the lovely ballad "Truale", it's surprising the audience has enough left to sing along. Those roadhouse crowds get into the rocking songs, but Rush knows his way around the slower, tender stuff as well.

-- DARRYL SMYERS
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Darryl Smyers.