If you‘ve been following our daily Livestream postings (every day on Facebook at 11am for over a year) you may have noticed the regular Tuesday posting – Scott Southworth Live From the Lost Highway. In truth, we only came across Scott because he was on the same bill as our UK friend Ags Connolly, but as Scott has continued to stream, we have continued to list him.
Scott recently very
generously arranged for his US distributers to send across his 3 albums – The
Last Honky Tonk In Town (2016) Hey Hillbilly Singer (2018) and his
most recent release These Old Bones (2020). Our first reaction was to get the CDs into
the truck and play them while driving, which is a great way to get a feel for
an album before reviewing. After only a
few minutes it was windows down, music turned up live and singing along!
Scott’s music is genuine
authentic traditional Country – in the singing style, the instrumentation, the
themes, in fact, everything about every song is Country!
With 3 albums of 11 tracks each, it would be crazy to try and review each individually, but as a taster, the first album – The Last Hony Tonk In Town - opens with a lament to the loss of traditional Honky Tonk Bars with When the Last Jukebox Dies and includes the song Mama Was A Roller Derby Queen. Album 2 Hey Hillbilly Singer starts off with the title track which has the opening line “Hey Hillbilly singer sing me a song about a cold-hearted woman done a good man wrong”. Trad country themes at their finest! Each song is stuffed full of the phrasing you’d expect, lyrics you will pick up instantly and sing along and a melody that makes you want to be dancing on the Bar’s tiny dance floor wedged in between the stage and the jukebox!
The most recent album is These
Old Bones which carries on where the preceding recordings left off. From Steel Guitars and Broken Hearts –
which almost summarises everything we think about Country Music – through Ain’t
Easy Leaving You and Where I’ll Be to the single release Brown
Liquor Scott leans mostly on guitar and steel, with a drummer out in the
back there and occasional keys all supporting his powerful vocal which oozes
Hill Billy Country! Mixing up tempo that
will have you clapping and stamping to the slower songs that will have you wanting
to take someone in your arms and two-step till closing time.
Every track on every album
will transport you to the traditional bar of history and Country Music
folklore, and every song is sure to have you singing along, even on your very
first listen.
As a body of work, these three albums are some of the finest I have heard, certainly from a lesser-known singer and I would hope that a festival organiser will consider bringing Scott over to the UK! Treat yourself to Scott’s newest Album These Old Bones, and then treat yourself to his back catalogue too!
In
addition to his (current) weekly Livestream you can find and follow Scott on
Facebook, Instagram and his website, plus of course on Spotify.
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