Mark Chestnutt is one of Country music’s most elite entertainers and has had 14 #1 hits, 23 top 10 singles, 4 platinum albums and 5 gold records. He is a basic and veteran country music singer and is still going strong, as his new CD release, “Outlaw” proves. He still sings great country and in this CD pays tribute to many of country’s finest musicians.

Mark started his career in the honky-tonks of Beaumont, TX singing covers by Lefty, Merle, George and Waylon while developing his crowd-pleasing talents and his authentic country style – because his style is good, ole fashioned Texas-drawl country music. I’ve been lucky to see him in concert and he puts on a wonderful show. If he is ever in your area you will not regret seeing Mark in concert.

The “Outlaw” CD is a tribute to some of his (and our) biggest heroes in country music. For instance, the song “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound” was an original hit recorded by Hank Williams Jr. in 1979. If you know anything about Hank and Hank Jr., they were rebels each in their own day and the song says it all – getting whiskey bent and hell bound was a way of life for them both. Mark does a wonderful job singing this vintage song.

“Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line” is a fast tempo toe tapper w/lots of great instrumentals that was first recorded by the late Waylon Jennings, the famed country music outlaw that gave up his seat on the plane to Buddy Holly the ill-fated night that saw the death of Buddy, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper when that same plane crashed. The song is fast-tempo and quick and it’s about a man whose woman just does not realize what a good man he really is. He works all day and she wants to play all night and he’s just coming unglued. She fusses and nags and he wants her to know that he’s tired of it and that he’s the only daddy that will walk the line for her and she’d be squawking if he left!

“Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” is a tribute to the late and greatest Johnny Cash. Funny how I just watched a special on Johnny’s life just this morning. This is one of his most popular songs and was written by the famous Kris Kristofferson. The lyrics are a bit sad but indicative of a life of drinking, smoking, songwriting and singing. It captures the life of many musicians who get caught up in the bar room scenes and wake up with hangovers, drinking a beer for breakfast to quell the pain and stumbling around for their cleanest dirty shirts. It talks about the Sunday morning coming down after the parties and how quiet the sidewalks are, daddies in the park with their children and the smell of frying chicken taking the singer back to a place he had lost. “And there’s nothing short of dyin”, half as lonesome as the sound, on the sleepin’ Sunday sidewalk of a Sunday mornin’ coming down.”

The outlaw music as performed by Waylon, Willie, Johnny, Kris, Hank Jr. and a few others was almost a genre of its own riding the edge of country music as we knew it back then. It was popular, hated, loved, embraced, or rejected. Those of us who loved it miss it, even though we love and embrace country music today, but there was just something different about Outlaw music, and Mark Chestnutt has done a superb job of capturing the best of the best in this CD. Buy the album and you will get a glimpse into the famous Outlaws of Country Music, as sung by a true artist, Mark Chestnutt.

You can find Mark at the following links:
www.markchestnutt.com, http://www.myspace.com/officialmarkchesnutt, http://www.facebook.com/markchesnutt?ref=ts&v=wall

Calamity Annie – CMTT Music Contributor
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