Mark Bryan’s Keep the Love Comin’ (playing now) comes with that awesome Hootie sound. Click the  to hear Oh Charlie, which he wrote for his kids, and again to hear Everybody’s Heart, which has a little Cowboy Mouth flavor. |
A Cowboy Mouth concert is one of the most intense experiences in Rock and Roll. It’s controlled chaos. It’s a cult of personality. The personality controlling the chaos is drummer/front man Fred LeBlanc. LeBlanc keeps his crowds on their feet and on the edge of pandemonium from the first note of the show through the final encore.
A collaboration between Hootie guitarist Mark Bryan and LeBlanc might seem to be a little like a “you’ve got chocolate in my peanut butter; you’ve got peanut butter in my chocolate” kind of relationship. However, when a popular songwriter like Bryan collaborates with the larger-than-life LeBlanc, we should expect output that is even better than Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
Produced by LeBlanc, Bryan’s latest release, End of the Front exceeds those expectations.
I heard Everybody’s Heart before I knew of the Cowboy Mouth connection. My first thought was that while the song had a familiar “Hootie-esque” feel, the drum-beat was particularly intense. After learning of LeBlanc’s contributions, it all came together. LeBlanc is about the most powerful drummer around, and it would be just plain silly to exclude his talents.
Intuition tells me that LeBlanc also had a heavy hand in Glad To Be Alive. The drumming is completely frenetic. LeBlanc’s work, however, seems evident in the lyrics. If you can keep up with this song long enough to pick up the words, you’ll hear about the struggle between the freedom of youth and the responsibility of growing up. This sounds like an autobiographical account of LeBlanc’s Peter Pan-ish career.
Traditional Hootie fans will appreciate the familiarly simple chords and harmonies of Hey Loretta and Keep The Love Comin’. These cuts remind us that you can take the boy out of Hootie….
A positive review from me usually results in fans taking down Amazon and iTunes sites with too much traffic. However, to get a piece of End of the Front, you’ll have to go to markbryanmusic.com. For 99 cents per song, you get Bryan’s music in the infinitely portable MP3 format, which makes it a much better deal than iTunes.
I only review music that I like. I never want to waste my time or a reader’s ripping on an artist. In the case of End of the Front, I’m going a step further with this recommendation: Buy it.
