Review: Steve Rivers, American Side Hustle

You can say this much for Canuck-bred, Nashville-based singer/songwriter Steve Rivers: he has the middling thing down to a science. About the best that can be said for his self-produced American Side Hustle — oh, the don’t-quit-your-day job joke is right there itching to be made — is that it is unerringly beige.

Take this chorus from the midtempo (of course) Riptide, which is illustrative of the album: “Light me up like a summertime bonfire / Get me high like a Colorado night / Lift me up like a Carolina sunrise / Pull me under again . . . like a riptide.” Crank that up, middle America.

Not that clichés will deter the marketing team at Chevrolet from turning the hackneyed Ol’ Small Town, with its Rocky Mountain sunrises, trucks and tractors, and love of a real good woman (*rolls eyes, sighs*) into the theme for the 2021 Silverado. And no, there is no joy in slagging off the work of what is probably a nice person. But there is no joy in listening to it, either.

American Side Hustle was released July 10, 2020.
Listen to it here.

Ol' Small Town ℗ Steve Rivers Music