Millican: galleywinter.com/main/...how&rid=35

Great review! I'm glad someone came around to doing this!

Review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

One might argue that Reckless Kelly is good at a lot of the same things other alternative country bands excel in. They've got the same nice rootsy mix of acoustic-electric instruments, and a scruffy sounding singer to deliver world-weary lyrics. But there's a difference on Wicked Twisted Road, and that's in how the band — guitarist David Abeyta, fiddler Cody Braun, singer Willy Braun, bassist Jimmy McFeeley, and percussionist Jay Nazz — puts it all together. From the get-go, the band shows its ability to deliver songs like the title track and "Dogtown" in the most natural, unaffected manner. The latter unwinds at a nice, lazy pace perfectly suited for Willy's vocal and harmonica solo. In other words, Reckless Kelly never gives one the impression that it's striking an alternative country pose consisting of one part talent and two parts attitude. The band also knows how to stretch itself stylistically. "Seven Nights in Eire" offers a surprising mix of Celtic and country and blending fiddles and steel guitar, while "Sixgun" offers brash, country-rock. If Wicked Twisted Road is a tale of life and love on the road, then Reckless Kelly has told it well. Fans will appreciate the solid effort, while everyone else — who's never quite gotten around to checking out the band — will find it a nice introduction.

That's a hell of a review. That guy has a way with words himself.

Here's another review....but good luck

www.kindamuzik.net/twa...ml?id=8460

I haven't heard anything from their new album yet but their artwork kicks ass big time.

The Stars of Texas Magazine
~Glenn Taylor

At the top if the liner notes in Reckless Kelly's previous release, "Under the table and Above the Sun", you will find the following statement. The problem: Pre-Teen, pre-packaged, pro-tooled, pretentious, industry-driven, corporate sponsored, tasteless, soulless, cyborg music that surrounds our lives and crowds our ears. Can I get an Amen? It's bands like RK that keep me interested in music. Yes indeeed, the boys are back with quite possibly their best album to date. "Wicked Twisted Road" is at this very moment, making the hair stand up on the back of my neck, as I listen to "Nobody Haunts me like you Do". Just one of the many skillfully crafted, handmade tunes that make up WTR. This is an album that feels like the road, written by a band of musicians that have lived that hard life for some time now. "My first love was a wicked twisted road", Willy Braun sings on the title cut, "I hit the million mile mark at 17 years old." This band is wise beyond their years, and so far ahead of the rest of the pack that is has ceased to be a contest. I can only hope that they never get tired of making music, because I will never grow tired of seeing them play live. Nor do I think I will ever lose the true excitement that each new RK album brings. It may have something to do with them not selling their souls to corporate America. Or maybe it's bigger than that. One thing is for sure, good music and integrity are safe in the hands of Reckless Kelly. Put down that big label fluff and grab a fresh copy of Reckless Kelly's "Wicked Twisted Road."

"This band is wise beyond their years, and so far ahead of the rest of the pack that is has ceased to be a contest. "


That says it all right there....thanks for the review!

no prob!
It took me forever to type it, cause I had a copy of the magazine, and I couldn't find it online.
There are some great quotes in that review!

RECKLESS KELLY Wicked Twisted Love Sugar Hill Records ****
Reckless Kelly look and sound like a bunch of Americans who might go on the razz in this great little country. And this they did, to judge by Seven Nights in Eire, which turns out to be much less cringe-inducing than expected. Indeed, Wicked Twisted Road is a strong and well-balanced collection of songs in the roots/country domain, with a hard-edged rock sensibility underpinning the music, not unlike one of producer Ray Kennedy's other clients, Steve Earle. Subtitled "A saga of love lost, love found and the wicked twisted road along the way", Willy Braun's songs are full of colour and character, and the Austin, Texas band rise to their task, infusing the 13 tracks with energy, wit and flair. Loads of highlights, but check out These Tears, the epic Motel Cowboy Show or the soft memories of Dogtown.www.recklesskelly.com
~Joe Breen (from a review from Ireland)

Thanks for posting those Melissa! Glenn Taylor DJ's here in Kerrville. He is actually the DJ that was working the night I won my copy! Awesome CD y'all! Check it out today!!!!

HOME: FEBRUARY 11, 2005: MUSIC: PHASES & STAGES


Phases & Stages
Texas platters
BY RAOUL HERNANDEZ





Reckless Kelly
Wicked Twisted Road (Sugar Hill)

On their fifth release – second for North Carolina indie Sugar Hill – Reckless Kelly has penned its "Freebird." True, the leadoff title track is only three minutes and lands smoothly, as opposed to crash-landing a three-guitar pileup, but its road/world weary tone and Southern drawl would make both Ronnie Van Zandt and Steve Earle stand on the nearest bar and proclaim this Austin quintet's authenticity. "Dogtown" follows in similar fashion, Willy Braun's twang as rustic and restless as a night in stir, while "7 Nights in Eire," Celtic cobblestones et al., is the reel jug-lander. When fiddles, steel, and guitars hit the open road on straight-ahead honky-tonk rockers "Motel Cowboy Show" and "Sixgun," Wicked Twisted Road leaves only broken bottles and broken hearts in its path. Wicked Twisted Road: The Board Game, folded into the CD insert with a tiny red die in the CD spine, traces all such pitfalls, including the ultimate "Freebird" landmark: a "plane crash, game over" square. Producer and former Twangtrust helmsman Ray Kennedy makes sure there are no such fatalities on WTR, though he leaves a few Braunies undercooked ("A Lot to Ask," "These Tears") and the album's back-end ("Wretched Again," "Stick Around," "Broken Heart") less compelling than the front grill. Nevertheless, as the WTR board game attests, it's only two squares between "wrote hit song, go ahead four spaces" and "hung over, go back three spaces," and between "Wicked Twisted Road" and its disc-end reprise, these Reckless Austin boys are mostly flying on all cylinders.

Nice!

from the real player browser:

MINI ALBUM REVIEW:
Reckless Kelly's Wicked Twisted Road is a Texas-tinged collection of heartfelt Americana songs that follows in the emotional footsteps of Steve Earle's less political songwriting. Accompanied by mandolins, fiddles, harmonicas, pedal steel and good old fashioned acoustic flat-picking, the song's haunting narratives come alive with a strange yet perfect luminosity.
- Eric S.

heather grows wrote:

and the album's back-end ("Wretched Again," "Stick Around," "Broken Heart") less compelling than the front grill. .

Guess everyone's taste is different!!! The 'back end' of the CD are my favorite songs!!!!!

I am with you Maureen......there are some songs to rock out to at the "back-end" of it! But you guys know my view on the cd......not a single song that I don't just love love love! But I might be a bit biased

Here's another review that was posted on RK message board!

Relish Spins!
CD Reviews
By Ed Bumgardner
relish staff writer
Thursday, February 3, 2005


Reckless Kelly

Wicked Twisted Road

Label: Sugar Hill

If you like: Steve Earle, Kenny Roby

Song to download: "Wicked Twisted Road"

No less a Texas songwriting legend than Joe Ely sings the roots-rocking praises of Reckless Kelly every chance he gets. Steve Earle, no slouch with a lyric, tapped the band, which hails from Austin, Texas (of course), to back him last year on tracks for tribute albums to Warren Zevon and Alejandro Escovedo.

Even a quick listen to Reckless Kelly's Wicked Twisted Road makes it easy to understand what Ely and Earle find appealing about the band. The disc straddles the same tightrope between raw rock and Texas country that Earle did so well on his classic Copperhead Road disc. Toss in an eerie vocal resemblance between Earle and Kelly's Willy Braun, who is also the band's main songwriter, and the recipe for a musical love affair becomes clear.

That said, Reckless Kelly is its own force to be reckoned with, a great roots band that skillfully mixes and matches various musical elements to make music of broad appeal, but not definition. Braun is a fabulous songwriter. He is a barstool poet, revelatory and sympathetic, who looks at lives lived hard, adventures measured and love treasured. His weathered voice, combined with the near-perfect arrangements of the band, make every song spring to life. Ballads ("Dogtown") mix easily with rowdier material ("Motel Cowboy Show") and the overall melodic appeal of Wicked Twisted Road is broad enough to move the band beyond Americana radio into the mainstream. And the great Texas bands and songwriters just keep on coming.

- Ed Bumgardner
relish staff writer

Amazon.com
Rockin' and eclectic, this Austin quintet aims to brighten honky-tonk nights with their fifth album, Wicked Twisted Road. Sure, there's a sense of regret in the opening title track and "Dogtown"--mostly for squandered youth and aspirations--but Celtic fiddle lines and singer Willie Braun's lilting melody makes the tour story "Seven Nights in Eire" a genuine pub song, and "Motel Cowboy Show" celebrates all-night boozin' and lovin' with hot pickin' and a rollicking drum beat. A revving motorcycle kicks off the bad -boy-on-the-run stomp "Sixgun." And there are bad girls, too, like the cruel lover who's "bitter and sweet as a death-row meal" in "Nobody Haunts Me Like You." There's also no shortage of big guitars, growling through half of these numbers and happily rubbing up against the spiky blues harmonica of the post-breakup slammer "Wretched Again." The album winds down with a lovely acoustic instrumental version of the title track--proof that even a wicked twisted road dotted with robberies, heartbreak, and drunkenness can turn back home, peacefully, again. --Ted Drozdowski

RECKLESS KELLY: WICKED TWISTED ROAD

It took me eight years to stumble on them, but in three minutes and 26 seconds, Reckless Kelly had me sold. The first track on their fifth album, both called Wicked Twisted Road, is one of those songs you have to listen to 20 times back-to-back to get your fill. And the other 12 tracks explore every shade of roots rock from gritty harmonica jams to frenzied fiddling to beer-soaked ballads to juicy riffs on mandolin and slide guitar.
Led by Willy and Cody Braun, heirs to the country music legacy of father Muzzie Braun of Muzzie Braun and the Boys, the five-member group (which includes David Abeyta, Jimmy McFeeley and Jay Nazz) has been throwing down albums since 1997. The songs range in style and subject, but each has the same confident ensemble sound and unshaven, black coffee feel. It is the kind of music you could listen to around a campfire just as easily as a concert stage, and unlike a lot of popular stuff these days, the lyrics are just as rich as the melodies.
Standout tracks include “Wicked Twisted Road,” “Sixgun,” “Wretched Again” and “Baby’s Got A Whole Lot More.” And as an extra bonus, the band includes a making-of video on the CD, so you can see the wicked twisted road unfold.
—Erin Ryan, BoiseWeekly.com

The five members of Reckless Kelly didn't undertake any grand act of musical reconciliation when they went into the studio to record their fifth album, Wicked Twisted Road. But, to hear them tell it, it just sorta worked out that way.

"There is a lot of the most country stuff and a lot of the most rock stuff we've ever done on this record," said guitarist and songwriter Willy Braun.


"We were trying to make a record that went from country to country-rock and back to country, with maybe some classic rock in the center," added Willy's brother Cody Braun, a triple threat on fiddle, mandolin and vocals.

Listeners can feel free to parse the new album however they choose; talking about it, as is so often the case with the best music, doesn't really do it justice.

Wicked Twisted Road has echoes of both the Eagles and .38 Special within its tracks, but it mostly bristles with the muscular, idiosyncratic energy and inventiveness that has led the band (which also includes guitarist David Abeyta, bassist Jimmy McFeeley, and drummer Jay Nazz) to become one of Austin, Texas' most dynamic and relentlessly entertaining live acts.

As was the case with their previous album, Under the Table & Above the Sun, the Texas quintet journeyed to Nashville for another collaboration with producer Ray Kennedy (whose other credits include albums by Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Jack Ingram and Nanci Griffith, among others).

"One thing about recording with Ray this time was the relationship we'd already established with him," said Jay Nazz. "That was a real advantage.”

"We scaled back a little bit in that we didn't use every instrument that was hanging on the wall," laughed Willy Braun.

In contrast—or perhaps complement—to the immediate visceral pleasure of cranking up Wicked Twisted Road on the car stereo or the iPod, the multiple facets of the individual songs come into focus one at a time: the lashing adrenaline rush of "Sadie Got A Six Gun" (which sounds as though someone handed Quentin Tarantino a guitar instead of a camera); the melodic bravado of "These Tears" ("[You] ain't a tough enough memory/To compare with what I've been through"); the small-town melancholy and ennui of "Dogtown"—taken from the Brauns' actual history, as was the wistful "Hiram and His Old Lady"; the Steve Earle-ish bad girl imagery of "Nobody Haunts Me Like You" (“You're…bitter and sweet as a death row last meal"); the picaresque, boozy travelogue that is "Seven Nights In Ireland" (the Emerald Isle may never be the same); the Southern rock send-up—complete with a Dixie-fried Greek chorus of girl singers—that is "Wretched Again"; and the hard-won wisdom that infuses "My Baby's Got A Whole Lot More" ("The highway's got what the dirt road's got…I been down 'em all before/And baby's got a whole lot more…").

Of Reckless Kelly, a critic for Music Row magazine wrote, "Rootsy, jangly country-rock, with all its punch in place. In my perfect world, this is what country radio would sound like." The Reader's Poll, conducted annually by the Austin Chronicle, named the group Best Roots-Rock Band for five years running (and they captured the award once more last year). The Detroit News and Free Press inquired, "Who knew alt.country could be so much fun?" The (Nashville) Tennessean referred to their "passionate twang-rock…a striking blend of churlish guitar, acoustic instruments, bluesy rock and memorable melodies." And Joe Ely—who should know—lauded them as "My kind of band: Hell-raising, hard playing, kick-ass songwriting, feet firmly in the present but with an amazing knowledge of where it has all come from. What," he asked reasonably enough, "else is there?"

Well, lots. At least, lots of history. Willy and Cody Braun were raised as heirs to a musical tradition. They grew up touring and playing with their father's band, Muzzie Braun and the Boys, across the Big Sky country of Idaho and Montana. They opened for the likes of Merle Haggard, played the Grand Ole Opry and even appeared twice on The Tonight Show in the Johnny Carson era. Family friends like singer-songwriter Chris Wall (who would later introduce them around Austin) and Pinto Bennett (whose band, the Motel Cowboys, would prove a huge RK influence) watched Willy and Cody learn about life from a rolling motor home, and saw their innate love of music begin to blossom.

"Dad's lyrics were always real and down to earth, day-to-day language," recalled Willy, "and I learned a lot about songwriting from him. And growing up on the road, he taught us pretty much everything we know—how to play, how to sing harmonies, taught us all about the business." (Muzzie Braun still performs as a single act for 70-100 nights a year in and around Idaho).

Eventually, as Horace Greeley advised, the young men headed west and grew up with the country. They wound up in Bend, Oregon in 1996 or so, in the faded-flannel twilight of the punk rock era, and formed a band called the Prairie Mutts. Their effervescent take on country and rock made them a poor fit for the scene. "The general consensus was, 'Take your happy country music and go somewhere else'," Willy Braun told the Dallas Morning News.

"Somewhere else" turned out to be Austin, Texas, a locale far more congenial to the band's emerging aesthetic than the damp and cloudy northeast. The beer was cold, and the musical atmosphere was downright inspiring.

The band arrived in 1997, at a time when the local music scene was beginning to segue from Stevie Ray Vaughan-era blues and R&B to a raucous Texas-centric fusion of country and rock at the hands of Pat Green and Jack Ingram.

Re-christened Reckless Kelly by this point (after the folk-hero Australian outlaw), the young band began hitting the honky-tonks and listening rooms in the Texas capital. Robert Earl Keen, one of the deans of the booming Texas country-rock scene, took them under his wing.

Most important to any developing young act, Reckless Kelly found a home: Lucy's Retired Surfer Bar was one in an endless strip of shooter-and-Jello-shot bars up and down Austin's Sixth Street district, but the joint let the band play acoustic shows every Monday and Friday night. In between, the band members tended bar, made inroads on the bar inventory and damn near received their mail there.

The group released its first album, Millican, in 1997; it sold over 20,000 copies, a formidable sum for a debut album on an indie label by a fledgling band. Acoustic: Live At Stubb's followed in 2000, as did The Day the same year.

All three albums found the band refining their sound; Millican was infused with country and folk influences, while The Day layered on cranked-up electric guitars (Acoustic, with its 16-minute version of "Whole Lotta Love," was more a souvenir for the fans, but fascinating in its own right).

2003's Under the Table & Above the Sun — their first album for Sugar Hill — found the band reconciling the disparate elements of their musical personality and it showcased Reckless Kelly at the top of their increasingly formidable game. The following year, they worked again with producer Ray Kennedy and artist Steve Earle, contributing tracks to the critically-acclaimed tribute albums for Warren Zevon and Alejandro Escovedo.

Now, Wicked Twisted Road is a bid to take everything up to a new level. Although they frequently perform on the same stage as Robert Earl Keen, Kevin Fowler, Jack Ingram, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Pat Green and the rest of the A-list of Texas country-rock, the members of Reckless Kelly don't feel themselves unnecessarily confined by the "Texas Music" label. Their vision is coast-to-coast.

"We do more gigs out of Texas than we do in," said Willy Braun, citing Reckless Kelly hotbeds in Oregon and Washington, New York, Connecticut, Chicago and Florida.

Be that as it may, last summer the band got to go on the road with some true Lone Star icons, opening a series of shows for ZZ Top. The opportunity gave the band a glimpse of one possible future. “It’s inspiring to see Billy Gibbons still going out there and kicking ass after doing it for 35 or 40 years," marveled Willy.

"I think for me, it was just seeing those guys up there playing," added Cody. "They're just such pros. They had it down and everybody loved it. I have a lot of respect for anybody that can hang in there that long in the music industry and still walk out onstage and have the crowd in the palm of their hand."

The Braun brothers, who were literally raised on the road, and the rest of Reckless Kelly, know that such careers are built one Saturday night at a time. Wicked Twisted Road documents a band that's ready to go the distance.

Written by John T. Davis