reviews

Voted best new album of 2002 by the American Freeform Music chart

Listen now !

"Made From Scratch" is a powerful and energetic disc of thirteen original compositions by this determined and humorous quartet. If you don't like the honky tonk music, I'm sure the tongue in cheek subjects in a number of the songs will appeal to you.
 
 

is made up of the following:

Tony Allen = acoustic, electric guitars, vocals, harps

Wayne Drummond = acoustic, steel, electric guitars,  fiddle, mandolin

Linda Malone  = Vocals 

Joy Malone = bass guitar, vocals

Jim McGee = drums, vocals, percussion

The song writing is for the most part handled by Wayne and Tony, and they manage to bring a smile of one sort or another to my face with each track.

The opening track is "The Law is the Law," and details why you don't want to mess around with the law in the South. As the cover note states, "It don't pay to mess around where the law is the law. Enough said." The on duty cop has a gun, and he doesn't mess around... so be careful!

There's always room for another trucking song, and when you can feel the wheels rolling beneath you and see the road stretching out for miles, then you know you've either got an overactive imagination, or the band has succeeded in their intent. In this case, it would be the latter.

The harmonica steals the show in Truckin' Man, while the guitar provides the rhythm of the wheels. This track is "dedicated to Tommy Blake, our late great Truckin' hero. Inspired by a big red Peterbilt, a truck 'Strong enough to pull the short hair off a Mule's Ass.'"

A personal favourite of mine would have to be "That's Right You're Wrong." This is a song about getting even when you've been dumped. Pretty much everyone has been on the receiving end at least once in their life, and this song will give you a laugh and something to reflect on. Getting mad is a waste of energy, getting even will at least allow satisfaction. Be prepared to laugh, it's just too funny!

OKOLONA has a great deal of talent, and the power to go the distance. If you like honky tonk, you'll be doing yourself a disservice if you don't give these good ol' boys a listen!

"Those old days in East Atlanta! Visits to the ice cream parlor. Hanging out at the soda fountain on Flat Shoals Avenue. Honky-tonker Wayne Drummond knows about those old days, the 1950s and '60s. He also knows that the only music in the place came from car radios. "Folks were very conservative, very proper and small-townish," he said. "Music was something that happened out on 42 highway near the truck stops." 

So when Drummond, neighbor Jim McGee and other teenage pals formed the country band OKOLONA in 1969, they looked past Flat Shoals to get heard. The closest to home they got was Buckalou Corral, a beery old joint out on Moreland Avenue's tatty edges. It's gone, as are most of OKOLONA's old haunts -- boarded up during white flight from Atlanta's inner suburbs in the '70s and '80s. 

Not the band, though. OKOLONA, its members now scattered from Covington to Buckhead, is still playing, and last August returned to its East Atlanta roots for a performance at The Earl. 

The Earl? Fifty-two-year-old Drummond remembers when the building that houses the popular East Atlanta club sold appliances; the only thing that rocked were washing machines. That's a bit of history, freely offered, and why not? The boys have been playing long enough to see bell-bottoms come back in fashion. They may be known more for their perseverance than their music, despite releasing a handful of self- produced CDs. And these days, the group's bassist and newest member is attracting more attention than the group's tunes. 

"My name used to be obscure," said the musician, who moved to the United States from Cairo, Egypt, when he was 10. "Now you hear it on CNN every three seconds." 

For the record, his name is Kheir ... Osama Kheir.