Listen Up: Wednesday, September 14, 2005
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PHOTOS: 1
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Patty Loveless

Dreamin’ My Dreams\r\n(Sony BMG)\r\n

By Tom Geddie

Dreamin’ My Dreams is Patty Loveless’ consistently solid, sometimes excellent tribute to the miseries of love, filled with real country ballads that don’t sound dated — either in the twangy past or in the seemingly accent-free present.

Loveless is bitter, resigned, or steadfastly determined in nine of the 12 songs; in the other three, love triumphs. That’s not a bad average.

Songs on this well-played, well-produced c.d. contain truth without cliché (or, at least, a fairly fresh look at clichéd perspectives on love). Loveless brings a basic simplicity, sincerity, and strength to the songs she chooses, reaching back to the 1960s for Delaney Bramlett’s “Never Ending Song of Love,” into the 1980s for Steve Earle’s “My Old Friend the Blues,” and her own new “Big Chance,” written with husband-producer Emory Gordy Jr.

Loveless also interprets songs by Richard Thompson, Lee Roy Parnell, Gary Nicholson and Delbert McClinton, Jim Lauderdale and Leslie Satcher, and Allen Reynolds. (His “Dreaming My Dreams with You” was covered most notoriously by Waylon Jennings; Loveless comments in the accompanying press materials that she hoped to obtain 10 percent of the impact that Jennings got on his version.) She does all of them well, often because she is a smoother singer than those who delivered the originals. She is also introducing many of the songs to newer, bigger audiences for the first time.

On a couple of country-folk songs, Loveless plays to one of her considerable strengths and goes “mountain soul,” including “Big Chance,” in which a 14-year-old girl pesters her mama and daddy to let her marry that mountain boy, and the spiritual “When I Reach the Place I’m Going.” With guest vocals by Emmylou Harris and Dwight Yoakam, Loveless pays beautiful tribute.


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