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Mark Chesnutt - Mark Chesnutt
Mark Chesnutt's rich baritone is automatically in the forefront of this rich, pure honky-tonk country album, his first major release after a series of small-press singles. It is his voice, one of the most perfect and consistently superior in country music, that gives Mark Chesnutt his true distinction. His first album was not an amateur effort. This was clearly work from a man who had paid his dues in the honky-tonks of Texas, growing up in Beaumont and following his musical father to Nashville when he was only 17 years old. "Too Cold At Home," the title track of this disc, is also the first track; and from that first line, "Well it sure is good to come in here and just pull up a seat/the frosty mug of a cool one helps to beat the heat," there is no doubting that Mark Chesnutt is, as George Jones referred to him, "as real as it gets." This boy is country.
The first five songs on this track were released as singles; the next five are every bit as good. "Brother Jukebox" is a standup salute to the denizens of the honky-tonk, the lonely and the heart-sick, a song that some have called, in the years that have passed since, the very epitome
of what a country song should be. "Blame It On Texas," is a two-stepping delight; "Your Love Is a Miracle," is a lighthearted toe-tapper; and "Broken Promise Land," surely one of the most beautiful ballads ever cut in country music. "Tonight I'm crossin' over and I'll reach the
cheatin' side/and I'll hate myself for comin' here again. Where the streets are paved with misery/and lives are built on lies/a place they call the broken promise land." It is rendered all the more poignant by Mark's exquisite singing.
But the excellence continues. Mark Chesnutt even recorded here, the same year as the more popular version from well, you-know-who, "Friends In Low Places." (Mark's version is considerably more laid-back and countrified; in it the singer seems far more depressed about his loss that them friends in low places are far more needed.) "Lucky Man," "Hey You There In The Mirror," and "Danger At My Door," each one as good as those single releases. Oddly, as good as Mark proved himself to be with this release, and as strong as his first singles were, he didn't win the CMA Horizon Award until two years later, in 1993 (he was first nominated in 1991).
Review by Kathy Coleman.
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