‘Bakersfield’ CD Review

Editor's Picks, Featured Article
on August 9, 2013
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Vince Gill & Paul Franklin
Bakersfield
CD $9.99 / MCA Nashville

Country star Vince Gill and steel guitarist Paul Franklin were looking westward earlier when they began selecting songs to honor the music of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, the two most successful artists whose careers were based in Bakersfield, Calif., instead of Nashville, Tenn., in the 1960s and ’70s. Putting their own spin on the “Bakersfield sound,” a less polished, more honky-tonkin’ alternative to Nashville’s country-politan smoothness, Gill and Franklin rollick through “Foolin’ Around” “Together Again,” “Branded Man,” “The Bottle Let Me Down,” “The Fighting’ Side of Me,” and other tunes from the catalogs of their West Coast heroes.