Lee Roy Parnell
On the title track of his new album, Lee Roy Parnell sings, How can true love ever find us/if we’re just someone we’ve made up? No doubt that’s a question to which Parnell has given some serious thought over the past few years. In the early ’90s, Parnell was a serious country hit maker — seven Top 10s in half as many years — but his music wanted to sing the blues at the very moment that country radio was deaf to everything but pop ambition. To keep up and fit in, Parnell twisted himself briefly into all sorts of uncomfortable positions.
Tell the Truth finds Parnell tired of playing the game. I declare, I’ve been set free, he announces on “I Declare” (with vocal assist from Keb’ Mo’), and that theme of musical and spiritual self-discovery guides nearly every track here. Cowriting usually with Dan Penn or Tony Arata and recording at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Parnell surveys the noncountry styles of his Texas youth, including a Pentecostal house wrecker called “Brand New Feeling” (I found a brand new me!) and the scorching Tres Hombres-inspired jam session “Crossin’ Over.”
Parnell’s music occasionally feels far too clean and comfortable for its own bluesy good. “Right Where It Hurts,” for instance, sounds as if the newly scrubbed Carlos Santana were soloing behind late-period Bonnie Raitt. This boutique vibe is underscored by Parnell’s singing, which is always serviceable but rarely distinctive. Still, Parnell’s slide guitar has never had this much bite, and when he’s trading vocal lines with Bonnie Bramlett on the steamy “Breaking Down Slow,” he’s never sounded so soulful. And he’s never sounded happier than on “South by Southwest” (a roadhouse boot-scooter with Delbert McClinton) when he proclaims, I gotta get back to what I like best!
