Upbeat honky-tonk, rock and roll – play loud.
Riotous, exciting, and right out of the bar room, Mac Leaphart returns with his album “Motel Breakfast”, where waffles are shaped like Texas and life is good. This is Americana with a heavy dose of country mixed with some quality storytelling.
Leaphart’s last album, “Music Joke City,” cracked the Americana Top 40 in 2021, and there is no doubt that this latest record should do the same if not better. Produced by Brad Jones, who has worked with Hayes Carll, Alison Moorer, Dolly Parton and John Prine, to name just a few, this collection sprints out of the box into the arena, bucking like an angry rodeo bull. There is so much energy and grit that the album doesn’t slow down until track 6, when ‘Pony, MT’ changes the mood and gives you time to catch your breath.
“It’s an upbeat honky-tonk rock & roll record that doesn’t skimp on craft or stories,” says Leaphart. Each song was introduced to the band at the start of a session and tracked within an hour. This gives the songs a fresh, live feeling and is built to be played loud. Leaphart aimed for a laid-back vibe in the style of Jerry Jeff Walker, and ‘Walking Slow Down a Busy Street’ captures it perfectly with chinking guitar rhythm, harmonica and a killer lead guitar at the end.
This is followed by ‘Shake a Leg’, which opens with the lines “She was hot as Nashville chicken / He was cool as a Firebird hood’. The song is about throwing caution to the wind and just going for it.
Fats Kaplin, who has worked with John Prine, Nanci Griffith, and Jack White, provides incredible fiddle throughout the collection. However, on ‘Girl From Tuscaloosa,’ he shows versatility by jumping on the pedal steel and playing beautifully throughout this stand-out track. Leaphart wrote the song for his wife, hoping to make her smile and dance. It works on both fronts, musically and lyrically. “Now, I’m never gonna lose the / Girl from Tuscaloosa / She’s on her way up here in Tennessee.”
‘Ain’t No Pistol’ pays homage to straight-talking, no-nonsense people who can be so refreshing in our world of spin, fake news and AI-generated images. Leaphart sings, “She ain’t no pistol, but she shoots straight / She got me on the good foot and headed the right way.” On ‘Belly Full of Peaches,’ Leaphart plays all the guitars and bass on a simple acoustic song, highlighting his songwriting skills and storytelling prowess.
You may find yourself a little breathless at the end of the collection, as it’s a wind-the-window-down sing-along collection that hits the country spot every which way. It would be more at home playing on the radio and driving along the Gulf Coast Highway, but it would certainly brighten your time when you are stuck in traffic on our UK motorways.
