Three years on from her excellent debut album (the wonderfully titled Jesus, Red Wine & Patsy Cline) Victoria Bailey trots back into view with an equally excellent follow-up which finds her standing tall in the saddle and embracing her inner cowgirl.
As on the first album Bailey clings fast to a traditional country sound replete with fiddle, mandolin and banjo and she remains a superlative singer. While Jesus, Red Wine & Patsy Cline had a honky tonk/ Bakersfield like sound to it, A Cowgirl Rides On is more akin to bluegrass with several of the songs having gospel like undertones. As such it’s a more immersive, and, dare one say it, a more emotional and personal listen than its predecessor. On occasion Bailey reaches into the pure Appalachian sounds of The Carter Family for inspiration and she delivers treasures such as the sublime Sweet By And By, a glorious song which resonates with the god fearing tradition and heavenly aspirations of early settlers. More upbeat but in a similar vein is the jaunty Down From The Mountain which is melodically similar to the old chestnut Give Me That Old Time Religion with both songs sounding simultaneously as fresh as a daisy and as old as the hills.
The album opens in a more contemporary vein with the title song which was inspired by Bailey’s reading of Distant Skies, a memoir penned in the ‘70s by Melissa Priblo Chapman which detailed her journey on horse across the US continent. The book resonated with Bailey who herself keeps a horse and she transforms it into a song about a spiritual voyage, a drifter, secure enough in the saddle who is buffeted and occasionally tempted (“Along came a cowboy from San Antone, he wanted to marry and build her a home) but instead she just moseys on along. It’s a tremendous song which deserves to be considered along with the likes of Gram Parson’s Grievous Angel in its portrait of a faded American dream. She tops this however with her own inner travelogue on End Of The Line, a five minute exploration of how best to battle on despite her travails.
Throughout the album, Bailey’s band (producer Brian Whelan, who also co-wrote some of the songs, on guitar, Ted Russell Kamp on bass, Philip Glenn on fiddle, mandolin, and banjo, Jeremy Long on pedal steel and Dobro and Leeann Skoda on background vocals) are on excellent form. They can whip it up as on the high spirited Snake Trails, a devil may care gallop of a song, or lay down a wearied cantina like patina on Sabina which is soaked with a liquor infused sense of revenge. There’s a slight return to the mode of the first album on Forever, You & I, a mid tempo tale which finds Bailey drinking alone and reminiscing about the man who walked out on her. Bailey closes the album with a fine rendition of Ricky Skaggs’ Waiting At The Gate, a return to the bluegrass gospel sound we mentioned earlier.
We reckoned Victoria Bailey was a name to watch back when Jesus, Red Wine & Patsy Cline came out and it’s gratifying to see that she hasn’t failed us. A Cowgirl Rides On is a tremendous step up and is destined to be one of our favourite albums of the year.