Frankie Lane’s career thus far has been littered with firsts – the first man to attempt to climb Everest from the stage of the Olympia, the first Irishman to record an entire album of material on the dobro, and (almost) the first to put me in hospital as a result of strained muscles from an excess of laughter on a road trip through the badlands of Ireland.
His musical pedigree is impeccable. Long stints with The Fleadhs, The One -Eyed Rattlers and sundry other projects have been but an apprenticeship for this special endeavour, an album of songs written and/or inspired by Marty Robbins. Sixteen tracks adorn the landscape creating a mix of the epic, the humourous, and the reverential, in what is truly a benchmark recording. Here’s why.
Beautifully structured, it opens with ‘Saddle Tramp’ – mandolin and guitar laying the bedrock for the story of the archetypal loner – and finishes with Seamus Begley taking lead vocals on ‘Come Home Rolling Stone’. Between the covers are to be found epic tales of love, death and skullduggery, anchored by two pieces in particular, ‘Texas Bells/San Angelo’, and the title track, a 10-minute tour-de-force which could itself be performed as, or expanded into, a C& W operetta.
Full of risks and riches it is a life’s work realised in magnificent fashion, a unique outing from a true gentleman.