Marty Stuart: Nashville Vol. 1, Tear the Woodpile Down

Marty Stuart
Nashville Vol. 1, Tear the Woodpile Down
(Sugar Hill)
[Rating: 3.5 stars]

Marty Stuart returns with this marvelous, if frustratingly brief, 30 minute album of traditional styled county originals. His appropriately named Fabulous Superlatives touring band is joined by a few guests, but this batch of wonderful songs that wrap themselves around oft-recorded C&W topics of truck driving, heartaches and lots of loneliness captures a rootsy groove that’ll make you forget all of Nashville’s slick qualities and love country and western all over again. In that sense it’s a continuation of Stuart’s career. The singer is in fine voice and seems inspired by this outlaw move to revive the time-honored music he loved when he first hit Nashville as an impressionistic kid in 1972.