Steve Pride and His Blood Kin
Pride on Pride
Spur
When somebody leaves 25 songs as strong as this laying around for almost a decade, (the cuts were recorded in the early ‘90’s) and then finally lets them out of the bag, it must have been a noisy night in Nashville – Music Row would be loud with the sounds of guitar cases closing and pencils erasing half-baked lyrics. Albums like this don’t get released every day – or hardly at all, anymore, but Pride on Pride is a glorious introduction to a songwriter that just by sheer talent transcends attempts to label him. Sure, Wilco’s Jay Bennett played on this, and helped package the songs, so you wouldn’t be far off calling him alt.country, and Adam Schmitt helped engineer, so you hear a touch of pop among the grooves. But with songs like “The Ghost of Mary Magdalene,” “Drugs, Guns and Cigarettes,” or the live “Big Money,” it evident that Steve Pride writes and sings Steve Pride music, and a wonderful thing it is. With the current state of Alternative Country fast becoming as cheap and phony as it’s rock and roll sister, Pride has the goods to be another Earle, Van Zandt, or Farrar. Or maybe in ten years, we’ll be calling somebody the “new Steve Pride.” That would be a label to wear with honor.
