I'm Your Biggest Fan

Album review

Dallas Wayne doesn't offer much different on his fourth album, I'm Your Biggest Fan, than he did on his previous three, but that's not a reason to complain -- it's a reason to celebrate, since there aren't many country singers this good nowadays. It's not just that he's a hardcore honky tonk traditionalist, as comfortable with barroom weepers as he is with Western swing and revved-up rockabilly like the excellent opener, "3:30 in the Afternoon" (although it is impressive that he can make these overdubbed sessions sound like a real, vibrant road band). It's not that his deep voice is a warm, expressive instrument. It's not even that he's a hell of a songwriter, authoring every one of these 12 songs (five are collaborations), and penning songs that feel like forgotten classics that have been waiting to be discovered for some 30 or 40 years on a jukebox in an out of the way Texas roadhouse. It's that he does all this while having a tremendous sense of humor, something that is sorely lacking in all varieties of popular music today. Nowhere is this better heard than on I'm Your Biggest Fan, an album that feels like a favorite album upon its first spin and just gets better from there. It's a lean, funny, unpretentious, rocking country album that's the perfect antidote for those country fans who feel alienated from both Nashville's star system and the achingly earnest, singer/songwriter-dominated world of alt-country.
© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo