| Wink Keziah & Delux Motel - Working Songs For the Drinking Class |
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| Written by Fred Mills | |
 Wink Keziah & Delux MotelWorking Songs for the Drinking Class [Great South] Since the early ’80s Tarheel twanger Wink Keziah has been barnstorming through the region in a succession of colorfully-named combos – Adam’s House Cat, the Hoodauls, the Rolling Tumbleweeds, and most recently, Delux Motel. Ten songs’ worth of honky tonkin’ that Waylon, Willie and Tompall would give their outlaw country stamps of approval to, Working Songs for the Drinking Class is the purest example of truth-in-titling you’re likely to encounter all year. Every track here clicks, from the bleary beer-goggles twang of “I Can’t Stop” and the garagey, pedal-steel powered truckers’ anthem “A Hot Woman and a Cold Beer” to the desperado-on-the-run desert-rock of “Laredo” and the luminous ballad “As Long As It Ain’t Here.” The latter in particular is worth singling out: it’s as vivid a blue-collar lament as a Springsteen epic, and a moving elegy for the passing of small town life, too. Throughout, Keziah spins his yarns from the voice of experience – he’s clearly done some hard living and even harder loving, and there are strong hints of murder, mayhem and moonshine in his songs – and in the voice of a seasoned honky tonker that’ll bring to mind a less affected Dwight Yoakam. Want more comparisons? Picture the Drive-By Truckers, the V-Roys and the Backsliders all piling into an RV and moving to Bakersfield and you just about got it. Fun Fact: a veritable Renaissance Man, Keziah’s also a licensed cosmetologist, and as he owns several hair salons he can cook up one motherfucker of a pompadour for ya. Oh, and in case anyone’s wondering about that errant “e” that should be at the end of “Delux”: it fell off the sign. No need to replace it, though. Why fix something if it really ain’t broke? |
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