A short while back I discovered Uncle Walt’s Band, and bought their self-released debut, reissued by Omnivore, with lots of bonus material. It’s superb.
I love it so much I’ve now got their follow up (also self-released), An American in Texas. This is another Omnivore reissue. Also packed to the gills with extras.
The group actually took a bit of a hiatus, between albums one and two. According to the liner notes for this album, Champ Hood took up violin between the recording of the first and second album. There is violin on the first disc, however. So I wonder about that?
What’s certain is that the violin plays a more prominent role here, later on. For example, the title track itself is a violin lead instrumental.
My initial reaction is that whilst American is brilliant, I slightly prefer their debut. What’s intriguing is that the extras on American are phenomenally good.
The upshot is that both collections, albums one and two, when taken together with the extras, are utterly fabulous.
UPDATE 15/12/‘25
Wowzers!
Listening to this again. My God, it’s good. No… it’s not good. It’s great. In fact, it’s utterly sublime. That an album like this can contain such hidden/lost gems as the solo guitar/vocal rendition of ‘You Touch My Heart’, by Walt Hyatt…
On its own that would be enough to make this a recording worth owning. And that’s just one of the previously unreleased tracks. It’s followed by a solo turn by bassist David Ball, on guitar/vocal, ‘Seems I Can’t Forget’.
And then – and this really blows my gaskets – ‘She’ll Be There’, another gem from Ball. But this time, with an added string quartet. Unique in their oeuvre, as far asI know? (Might there be more such treasures? What a thought!) This is music that has fallen straight from my kind of Heaven.
I’ve upgraded this from five to six stars. It’s on repeat in my CD-player, on the third time round, and I have no desire to stop it!
