Album Review: Jade Eagleson, Honkytonk Revival

Before a string is plucked or a verse is sung, Jade Eagleson’s sophomore album broadcasts its cheeky intent with its song titles. Witness “Whiskey Thinks I Am” and “Hangover Like You” as well as “More Drinkin’ Than Fishin’” and the seemingly contradictory but actually tongue-in-cheek “I Don't Drink.” If you surmised that Honkytonk Revival is a fiesta record, well amigo, pour yourself three fingers and ¡bébelo!

Here’s the interesting thing, though. For all its whooping and hollering and posturing about guzzling bucketloads of booze, Honkytonk Revival is studiously well-crafted and buoyed by the top tools of the trade (fiddles, dobro, steel guitars) and by a slick 90s-era country sensibility that renders each of these corkers greater than the sum of their parts. The lyrics, though built for belted singalongs, are especially compelling on closer listen. 

“Whiskey Thinks I Am,” for instance, finds our man candidly admitting to slumming as an everyman while sober but soaring as a hero in his imagination while wasted. The swaggering “I Don’t Drink,” with its winking lyrics (“I drink beer because it ain’t right to keep things bottled up,” hee haw) masks its heartbreak much as a living, breathing cowboy might.

The album’s sole ballad, “She Don’t Know” boasts similarly clever wordplay while framing Eagleson’s booming, bracing baritone in tender sentiment… though you just know there’s a mickey stuffed in his back pocket even as he gets down on one knee. Dude’s got spirit to burn. So does his ridiculously fun new album.

Honkytonk Revival was released November 12, 2021.
Listen to it here.