Live at Billy Bob's Texas: Lynn Anderson

Anderson sounds pretty good on this set recorded, one would guess, in the late '90s, or at any rate shortly before its 2000 release. (Like everything in the Billy Bob's Texas series, no date is given in the liner notes.) There's nothing extraneous to the band, either: just a pretty tight seven-piece combining electric guitar and a rhythm section with piano, fiddle, and steel. A bunch of her expected hits are on hand, including "Rose Garden," of course, as well as "You're My Man," "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," "How Can I Unlove You," and "What a Man My Man Is." She must have done "Rose Garden" many, many times prior to this recording; at the end, she thanks the audience and acknowledges, à la that heavily accented ex-baseball playing announcer on Saturday Night Live's news broadcasts, that "that song, it was very very good to me!" There are some covers that you might not expect but are not ill fits: Ian Tyson's "Someday Soon"; done country style, the Carpenters' "Top of the World"; and the Drifters' "Under the Boardwalk." This disc is not an electrifying find, but it's decent for what it is.