Details
Track Listing
1. When My Mornin' Comes Around
2. There's a Wall in Washington
3. Wasteland of the Free
4. I'll Take My Sorrow Straight
5. This Kind of Happy
6. Way I Should, The
7. Letter to Mom
8. Keep Me God
9. Quality Time
10. Walkin' Home
11. Trouble - (with Delbert McClinton)
Album Notes
Personnel: Iris DeMent (vocals, acoustic guitar, piano); Delbert McClinton (vocals, harmonica); John Jennings (acoustic, electric & slide guitar, bass); Randy Scruggs (acoustic & 12-string guitar, mandolin); Steuart Smith (electric & slide guitars); Lonnie Mack, Brent Mason (electric guitar); Paul Franklin (steel guitar); Mark Knopfler (National guitar); Earl Scruggs (banjo); Tammy Rogers (mandolin, fiddle, violin, viola, cello); Chuck Leavell (piano, organ, accordion keyboard); Dave Pomeroy (bass); Harry Stinson
(drums, background vocals); Tom Roady (tambourine); Russ Taff, Bekka Bramlett, Billy Burnette, Melodie Crittenden (background vocals).
Includes liner notes by Iris DeMent.
All tracks have been digitally mastered using HDCD technology.
THE WAY I SHOULD was nominated for a 1998 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
Iris is back, and she's angry. You wouldn't know it from her sunny voice and upbeat arrangements, though, and that's the charm of THE WAY I SHOULD. DeMent contrasts her tales of anguish and outrage with lustrous, open-sounding music that couches her lyrical darkness in a bed of subtle irony. Backed by some of Nashville's finest, including Chuck Leavell, John Jennings and Steuart Smith, she presents an ambitious group of songs that mark her as a major new voice in country music.
DeMent unveils a newly politicized outlook on THE WAY I SHOULD. With "Wasteland Of The Free" and the antiwar sentiments of "There's A Wall In Washington," you might think you've stumbled onto Billy Bragg's country cousin. More personal issues of equal gravity are covered on the powerful "Letter To Mom," where an adult reflects on a childhood trauma, and the Iris-meets-her-maker scenario of "Keep Me God." The simple grace of DeMent's songwriting--she has a gift for boiling complex ideas down to the basic facts--is most apparent on her collaboration with Merle Haggard, "This Kind Of Happy."
Industry Reviews
The freshest young talent in contemporary folk weighs in with her third wonderful album. Dement can genre-hop seamlessly, dipping into traditional folk, folk-pop, honky-tonk country, gospel and blues... - Rating: A-
Entertainment Weekly (10/18/1996)
...Dement's vocal casts a simple, evocative backwood country veil over proceedings, dashing the comfort of melody with the pain of reality, a true reflection of the gravity of her situation.
Q (12/01/1996)
Ranked #17 in the Village Voice's 1996 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll.
Village Voice (02/25/1997)
The freshest young talent in contemporary folk weighs in with her third wonderful album. Dement can genre-hop seamlessly, dipping into traditional folk, folk-pop, honky-tonk country, gospel and blues... - Rating: A-
Entertainment Weekly (10/18/1996)
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