About John Rich

• Biography

About John Rich

Editorial Reviews

Recorded in 1999 -- post-Lonestar and preceding his association with Big Kenny Alphin -- John Rich's solo debut is a potent hybrid animal. On the one hand, the thundering power ballad "Underneath the Same Room" and the silky love song "I Pray for You" (revisited on Big & Rich's Comin' to Your City) are right out of Lonestar's harmonizing songbook, with Rich and his background singers laying on the earnest vocalizing and cooing backup sounds. On the other hand, the funky, fuzzed-out "She Brings the Lightnin' Down" (with vocal assists from Big Kenny and Delbert McClinton) portends the hard-country edge that has marked B&R's more ferocious workouts. A horse of a different color, in Rich's case, is "Old Blue Mountain," a thumping, Irish-inflected (right down to the bagpipes) decree of self-affirmation that features a keening duet vocal by Sara Evans rising up out of the swirl of pedal steel and jittery fiddle lines. Emotions run highest, though, on the album's gospel sign-off, "New Jerusalem," a shouting, crying, sanctified a cappella workout with Rich taking a potent tenor lead over the responsive rumblings of the venerable Fairfield Four. The album closes with a three-minute hidden bonus track featuring Rich's then-septuagenarian grandfather vividly recounting some of his experiences as a WWII combat soldier. There's no particular context for this snippet of conversation, except that it's part and parcel of a project that goes for the heart at every turn. David McGee, Barnes & Noble

Customer Reviews

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