Album Number Two

After years of struggling to make it in Nashville, Rory Feek became a well-known songwriter with hits by Clay Walker and Easton Corbin who got a CMA Song of the Year nomination when he sang Rory's "I'm a Little More Country Than That." Rory finally stepped into the spotlight when he teamed up with his wife Joey on the reality show Can You Duet, a co-production of CMT and Simon Cowell's American Idol franchise. The couple placed third on the show's first season in 2008 and scored a contract with Sugar Hill/Vanguard. Their debut, The Life of a Song, entered the Billboard country chart at number ten, and won them a Best New Duo award from the Academy of Country Music in 2010. Second albums are notoriously hard to put across, so Rory takes the challenge full-on with the opening track, "Album Number Two." It's a tongue-in-cheek examination of the ups and downs of the music biz, and more than slightly autobiographical. It sends up and celebrates their success, and features Catherine Marx on honky tonk piano and Mike Johnson's pedal steel supporting the duo's playful vocals. The duo covers a lot of territory here, showing off Rory's solid songwriting skills and Joey's vulnerable country vocals. "God Help My Man" is a cheatin' song that turns the conventions of the genre inside out with a strong vocal from Joey that promises her no-good spouse some instant karma when he gets home from his girlfriend's house. "Where Jesus Is," a low-key song of faith, finds the sacred in the everyday lives of ordinary people. "You Ain't Right" is a rockin' portrait of a good old boy who feeds his family with roadkill and shows up to church in a beer-stained T-shirt. Rory goes out on a limb to sing lead on "My Ol' Man," a sentimental song about his dad that he delivers with a bare-bones arrangement dominated by the piano of Catherine Marx. It's a simmering performance that's one of the album's emotional highlights. ~ j. poet, Rovi