Bakersfield Bound

by William RuhlmannBetween more commercial projects, Chris Hillman has a tendency to revert to more traditional sounds. A couple of years after the demise of the Desert Rose Band, he reconstituted its primary members -- himself, Herb Pedersen, and Jay Dee Maness, along with some studio players -- for this genre exercise that finds him and Pedersen making like the Wilburn Brothers, the Louvin Brothers, the Everly Brothers, and Buck Owens with Don Rich, among other country vocal teams, and cutting material by and/or associated with Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, and Skeeter Davis. The duo is steeped in this material, and they perform it with authority and conviction. Having refreshed themselves by returning to their roots, it will be interesting to see what they do next.