The Roamers - The Roamers (2024)

The Roamers play a good kind of country music, the kind that is unmistakably country but is heavily dosed with rock 'n roll. Trade out the lap and pedal steel guitars for something heavier, and remove the twang from bassist, lead singer and songwriter Matt Rice's voice and you'll have completely crossed over into that louder and more youthful genre. It shows you how closely related the two popular and seemingly disparate styles of music really are.

Rice describes The Roamers as a collective rather than a band. "The reason I named it The Roamers is because the members/players kinda roam in and out of the band depending on what day, week or month it is. There are a lot of us involved, and it's rare that we can all get together at the same time.

On this concise, eponymous, eleven song, debut Rice is the bassist, Brian Whelan plays guitars and all keyboards, Luke Adams is the drummer and percussionist, and Matt Pynn contributes the lap steel and pedal steel guitars.

"Playboy" is a boogie workout with a rocking guitar solo. "I Can Be Lonely" would be Americana heartland rock in the hands of someone like John Mellencamp, and "Room To Roam" is indisputably a rock song, so is "They Come Around," a track featuring more great axe work.

Rice is not a lightweight songwriter. His lyrics are often based on real life events. "Favorite Things" was inspired by someone he knew "who was very dear to me and struggling at the time." One of the verses addresses that situation directly, but Rice's fertile mind allows him to create his own story from there.

This is a mature set of songs from a family man who has experienced enough of life to make an album for adults.

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