Alan Tyler - So Far: Old Favourites & Country Covers

Camden cowboy’s very own basement tapes

Tyler’s Lost Sons Of Littlefield was one of the first great releases of 2007, and he ends the year with a rough-and-ready collection of his most beloved country-tinged tunes, recorded live in former Rockingbirds bandmate Sean Reed’s front room. Committed to tape over a single weekend, it’s a million miles from the corporate slickness of the modern Nashville machine, and all the better for it.

The covers offer constant delights, Tyler acknowledging his debt to Johnny Cash (A Thing Called Love), Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson (Luckenbach, Texas) and, naturally, Hank Williams (I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry), artists whose music spurred him on to make his own magnificent records, where the delta and dustbowl punctuate the same map as his own Home Counties upbringing. Equally pleasing are the returns to early 90s Rockingbirds charmers, such as the sublime Gradually Learning or the chirpy stroll of Standing At The Doorstep Of Love, a song once considered for inclusion on a Dolly Parton album.

By bringing the prairie to the parlour, So Far reaffirms these country gems’ status as modern folk ballads for the everyman. There aren’t many urban cowboys who hang their hats in North London, and Tyler should be regarded as a national treasure.

Hanky Panky | HPR 010

Reviewed by Terry Staunton
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