Album Review: Josh Turner Live at the Ryman

I’ve never understood why artists record live albums and then exclude tracks from the live release. Once you’ve made a 14-track live album, the marginal cost of adding the rest of the set can’t be prohibitively great. I don’t know who selected the tracks for Turner’s Cracker Barrel release, but this album suffers greatly from poor track selection.

Josh Turner is not of sufficient accomplish to release a live album on a major label and he needs all the help that he can get on this release. The omission of “Me and God” and “Would You Go With Me” is unwise while the failure to include “Your Man” is nothing short of mystifying. A live album with only one recognizable original (“Long Black Train”) does not make for good entertainment.

Fortunately, this does not mean that the album is choke-full of Turner album cuts. Classic country covers are clearly the focus of the collection, and Turner’s take on “Lord Have Mercy on a Country Boy” is nothing short of stunning. However, Turner’s versatility as a cover artist is extremely limited and most of the covers on the Cracker Barrel album serve to highlight his deficiencies rather than his strengths. I’ve never heard Turner sing a true heartbreaker, and perhaps this explains his excessively jovial take on “I’ll Never Get Out of the World Alive” and his laid-back and dispassionate approach to “Silver Wings.” “He Stopped Loving Her Today” is impossible to cover and, after recording it for a previous Cracker Barrel collection, Turner sings it with an undeserved sense of ownership. Songs that he’s previously covered on the Grand Ole Opry, such as his hero John Anderson’s “Swingin’,” would have been better choices.

The Turner originals on the collection are strong if obscure. “Loretta Lynn’s Lincoln” has been getting unrecruited spins on WSM since its release and is the most enjoyable song that Turner has ever recorded. “Backwoods Boy” and “Way Down South” are lyrically uncreative but elevated by Turner’s vocal skill and the traditional arrangements.

Still, I can’t help but mourn the loss of several songs and much of the stage banter from what was reportedly an electric show at the Ryman Auditorium. When one whole track is devoted to Turner’s introduction of his road band – the most boring part of any live show – why not include more songs?