Russ Still and the Moonshiners - Still Cookin' (2017)

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Written by David Shouse, posted by blog admin

Georgia country rockers Russ Still and the Moonshiners are lost in time.  The problem is it’s 2017 and these guys think that big guitars, dynamic songwriting, tight rhythm playing and a singer who doesn’t need studio polish to get a vocal tone are going to get them through. There’s certainly still a sizeable audience out there for this sort of gritty, profoundly American music.  The Georgia Music Awards recently lauded Russ Still and the Moonshiners “Country Band of the Year” and there’s a reason for it; the band’s music has chops, panache and plenty of killer fret-work to feast your ears on. 

Still Cookin’ is the band’s 2^nd full-length outing and they are in fine form throughout.  The only minor thing that might help the record is putting one of the big acoustic/piano/guitar workouts like “I Can’t” or “10, 000 Ways” at the end of the record.  It’s strictly a construction issue; the album feels a little front-loaded with these big, larger than life numbers. Listeners can definitely hear in these tunes that they are the band’s equivalent to iconic classics like “Highway Song” or “Green Grass and High Tides” and deserve more climatic slots. Placing them closer to the album’s end allows them, as well, to frame Still’s powerful voice in the most dramatic light possible.

Elsewhere, the tightly meshed music unit serve up thunderous Southern rock riffs and leads on “Promised Land” and “Workin’ Class Hunter,” take a gleaming acoustic foundation and turn it into electric gold on the ornery “Long Way from Home,” deliver excellent call/response lead and background vocals along with driving guitar licks in “Glorine’s” before merging acoustic/ and electric atmospherics across the gravel road rollick of “Goin’ Fishin’”. The anthemic “Juantia” gives the band another opportunity for a particularly on target cut highlighting many of the band’s greatest strengths. Stellar production provides clarity to each instrument and highlighting the infectiously locked-on playing of every musician. The aforementioned lack of a major production number near album’s end is a minor weakness, but not one ever threatening to drag the release down as a whole. If you thought this hybrid of rock and country lingered on forever usurped by the likes of Kenny Chesney or Florida Georgia Line, Russ and his Moonshiners stand as a sharp rebuke to such misplaced beliefs. Big, bold, hickory flavored country rock is alive and well on each of the 9 tracks of Still Cookin’; crack a cold one and enjoy.