Back in 2020, I used to give rating out of five for new projects. I gave the first side of the duo’s two-sided release 5/5 calling them ‘authentically southern but very poppy’. Brent and Anthony from Kentucky have everything going for them, including a burgeoning UK fanbase.
I caught their set at The Long Road, which they followed by talking to a coterie of country critics milling around in the press area. They reprised their set from C2C, covering Man of Constant Sorrow and previewing songs from this second side.
With money from Broken Bow and production from Luke Laird, Everette have the best possible chance to succeed. Even better, they have some fine A-listers in the room with them while the songs came into being. Ross Copperman added his signature anthemic songwriting style to Run, which opens the project with a plea to a lady to ‘run right back to me’ when she is ready to do so.
Ryan Tyndell – who co-wrote Springsteen with Eric Church, an obvious influence on this project – worked on their single Gonna Be A Problem, which sounds like country radio in 2022 by production (bass drum stomp, explosion into the chorus), lyric (‘the reason I’m having trouble breathing!’) and melody, with spoken-sung verses that elide prettily into the chorus. It’s a winner.
The great Aaron Raitiere, who is so hot right now and has worked with Ashley McBryde on her Lindeville project, was there for three of them: Woo Hoo Hoo, a sort of modern-day work song which keeps the guys positive as they toil and includes a punchline (‘you can be the bread or you can be the toaster’); Wild Woman, which is a riff-driven barroom stomper; and (watch it, DJs) Shunk As Drit, a toe-tapper full of consonantal replacement, which isn’t reduced to just the song’s title, about laughing in the face of Armageddon which is almost a comedy song.
Bryan Simpson, who was in a band which once released a song called Harry Potter, was with Everette in the composition of She Got That From Me. It’s an excellent list song, if such a thing can exist, where a lady picks up various things from various other things (freckles from the Kentucky sun, temper from her Irish blood, style from Vogue Magazine) but her ‘heartache’ comes from her ex, voiced by the duo. I hope it gets the audience it deserves.
Chris DuBois brings his expertise to Make Me Want One, which opens with the image of a cigarette ‘rolling off your pretty red lips’, continues with an invitation to a Panic! At The Disco gig and has a come-on of a guitar part to echo the chorus lyric. Matt Jenkins helped them with closing track Get By, which rhymes ‘freight train/hurricane’ in its first couplet and becomes one of the many carpe diem songs with a singalong feel which are written in Music City to make money.
Everette make it sound tuneful and a third UK visit must be on the agenda for 2023.
A Country Way of Life 