Patient Man

1	I Meant To 3:19
2	Can't Tell Me Nothin' 3:11
3	Patient Man 3:50
4	I Miss Me 3:25
5	High on Love 3:43
6	Rock and Roll in the Hay 3:51
7	Hard to Be a Rock 3:30
8	I Came Here to Live 4:26
9	Blue Collar Night 4:14
10	I've Got Time 4:51

Barnes & Noble

Class distinctions abound on Brad Cotter's debut album. His heart is with the blue-collar, redneck crowd, and his ethos is defined by the "three stoplight town," flatbed trucks, and "skinny dippin' down by the lake," and "smokin', rockin' redneck rave" -- this is not music for the Topsiders crowd. Favoring an edgy, rocking sound with in-your-face drumming, a generous dollop of honky-tonk piano, and Skynyrd-ish wailing guitars, Cotter brings it all home with a husky voice that has precisely the right measurements of grit and honey to make it compelling. But he's no mindless party animal. The roiling "Blue Collar Night" bemoans the burden of taxation on the lower class, describes a hope for self-sufficiency down the line, and exults in a night out with 20 bucks in one's pocket. The dense, surging "High on Love" effectively evokes the peaks and valleys of small-town life and love for "two crazy kids / high on love," its tender sentiments offset by the reality of what the future holds. Staying thematically consistent on the mid-tempo "I've Got Time," Cotter portrays a man determined to pull himself up from the bottom in hopes of snagging the economic brass ring and a good woman's love to boot, even as the moaning of a pedal steel guitar seems to cry otherwise. Similarly, "I Came Here to Live" rides on soft mandolin strumming and low-key electric guitar playing, as Cotter sings his vow to rise above his lowly station in life and to pass that determination on to a baby born with an unspecified disability. That big heart makes Brad Cotter's unveiling an event worth noting for its long-term promise. David McGee

All Music Guide

Brad Cotter is the winner of the second season of Nashville Star, a USA Network series that offers a down-home spin on Fox's runaway success American Idol. Like American Idol, Nashville Star naturally gravitates toward the middle of the road -- part of the point of these talent contests is to find singers who appeal to the broadest possible spectrum, so it should come as no shock that the winners are firmly within the mainstream. The first Nashville Star winner, Buddy Jewell, was a Texan who, no matter how friendly he was, had little of the grit that marks Lone Star country. Cotter is similar to Jewell -- a likable everyman, with modest but discernible vocal talents and a pleasant personality. He's not from Texas -- he's from Alabama, but he sounds pure Nashville on his quickly released debut album, Patient Man, which appeared just about two months after the close of competition. He has a mellow tenor voice that slips easily into these polished arrangements that lack twang but have an evenhanded blend of post-Garth Brooks country, Alabama (the band, not the state) country-rock, and, of course, a lot of '70s soft rock. All ten songs are midtempos -- "Blue Collar Night" may try to get rowdy, but it would never be played in a honky tonk -- and they're all produced and performed quite well, and Cotter proves that he can fit into these slick Nashville surroundings quite comfortably. Stephen Thomas Erlewine