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

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Written by Charles Hatton, posted by blog admin

Genre collisions either happen harmoniously or else devolve into disjointed reminders of how everything doesn’t go together. Guitar rock melded with country in the early 70s, thusly creating the stylistic shake-up “southern rock” or “country rock.”  Flagship bands kept it going through the 80s, but many of them gave in to the pressures of 80s pop; adding new-wave’s synths and Top 100 melodies.  It didn’t work and the genre has since gone underground with a few pockets still taking creative liberties in the early twenty first century.

Russ Still and the Moonshiners are one of those bands to keep the fire stoked.  Led by songwriter/guitarist/vocalist Russ Still, the band is happy to shake the notion that southern rock was just an increasingly smaller audience remembers in the current times.  The Internet keeps it alive, but attendance at these shows is still not what they used to be.  It reflects the fickleness of the marketplace and popular tastes rather than acting as a critical barometer for the style’s enduring value. Opening with the diesel-fueled, guitar lick packed “Promised Land,” the band’s second album Still Cookin’ immediately offers plenty to love for the genre’s purists.  It’s got groove to spare, kickin’ guitar riffs, a telepathic rhythm section and great vocals laying down sing-a-long melodies.  Russ Still and the gang quickly prove that they aren’t a one trick pony as the entire album is packed with songs of this caliber (finely played and produced ones to boot). 

You get the monstrous, winding ballads with acoustic/electric transitions and free-wheeling vocals (“Long Way from Home,” “I Can’t,” and “10,000 Ways.”)  These ballads are beautifully jammed with acoustics, keyboards, huge hooks and thrusts of electric guitar in all of the right places.  Then there are the rockers that follow in the fine tradition of “Promised Land” such as “Glorine’s,” “Goin’ Fishin’,” “Juanita,” the dirge-riff highlight “Workin’ Class Hunter” and high-octane closer “Run Away.”  The songwriting is polished but the tunes have the requisite rough edges to make them fine examples of the genre’s forefathers and hella catchy n’ cool too. 

Still Cookin’ does really nothing wrong and everything right from the first note to the last.  It’s gravelly enough to win over the hard rock crowd and soulful enough to please country fans, which is exactly what good southern rock should do in the first place.