Take equal parts pure country music, heartache and expert musicianship by some of country and rock music’s finest, and you’re left with Howard Salmon and Deborah Martin-Lemmon’s Old Habits Are Hard To Break.
Along with Salmon and Martin-Lemmon’s long-awaited fulfilment of an almost joking declaration – “We gotta make a country album one of these days,” this album is a superb undertaking that includes some true music legends – Scott Joss on fiddle (of Merle Haggard fame); Keith Edwards on drums (who’s made appearances on releases by Amy Grant, Ricky Scaggs, Johnny Rivers, Tanya Tucker and Pam Tillis); Bruce Turgon on Bass (of Foreigner); Ben Haggard on electric lead guitar (Merle’s son). You get the picture. These folks are serious business.
To match both the purity that comes across on their CD and the sometimes gut-wrenching, honest and soulful songwriting that does more than it’s fair share of communicating a very “broken down” aesthetic, I worked closely with Martin-Lemmon and Salmon to put together imagery to compliment their musical craftsmanship.
From the liner notes:
This is about dreams, great and small – the American dream, with all it’s landscapes, visions, hopes, heartaches and successes. Imagine attending an old fashioned baptism by the river, watching a cowboy reminiscing over a lost love, a couple who long to be together but just can’t make it work, a solitary truck driver wanting nothing more than to get back home, or how about just some good old foot stomping fun…this album gives that and much more, subtle reminders of great days gone by, pure country music with soul and tradition, the way songs are meant to be sung, portraying feelings of generations past yet providing insight to the present.
Yup. This is good ol’ pure country music executed by some of the best in the business.
