Mickey Newbury Albums (18)
'Blue to This Day'
Release Date 12/9/2003
Tracks 15
Label Mountain Retreat
See Album Tracklist and Review
'Winter Winds'
Release Date 5/8/2002
Tracks 16
Label Mountain Retreat
See Album Tracklist and Review
'A Long Road Home'
Release Date 1/22/2002
Tracks 11
Label Mountain Retreat
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Fate can be a funny thing. Into his fourth decade as a singer/songwriter and battling emphysema (he's hooked up to an oxygen tank around the clock), Mickey Newbury has made his piece de resistance. Newbury rose amidst friends and colleagues such as Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and the late, great Townes Van Zandt as a formidable Texas songwriter in the late '60s and early '70s. He wrote memorable hits for other artists while recording his own, less-recognized albums. A Long Road Home finds the embattled singer/songwriter deeply reflecting upon the journey, and it's a touching and strong song cycle. There are memories of when he was a teen with vinegar in his veins tearing down endless highways toward something or another (and more importantly away from something or another), in the form of "In '59." There are also multiple tales of romantic regret, such as "I Don't Love You," with its parsimonious lyrics, and "Where Are You Darlin' Tonight." There's also the stirring and disconcerting "So Sad," which ranks among Newbury's best compositions. He also revisits past victories with an updated take on "Here Comes the Rain, Baby," which was originally recorded for 1968's Harlequinn Melodies. Newbury may be embattled physically, but the creative fires burn fiercer than ever. This is a remarkable album. ~ Erik Hage, All Music Guide
'Stories from the Silver Moon Cafe'
Release Date 10/10/2000
Tracks 13
Label Mountain Retreat
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What The Critics Say
Stories From the Silver Moon Cafe was a characteristic effort in many respects. As on all Mickey Newbury albums, the spaces between tracks were filled with atmospheric sound effects such as chirping crickets, barking dogs, a passing car, trains, and plenty of rain and thunder. As on all Mickey Newbury albums, the selection of songs mixed new compositions and re-recordings of old songs. And as on all Mickey Newbury albums, there were some classic country songs. "Don't it sound like something you have heard before?" Newbury asked in "Oh Mama," and he easily could have been referring to his own work. Even the imagery was repeated: Two songs employed the phrase "one thin dime," and freight trains were mentioned in three. It had always been a talent of Newbury's to write country songs that sounded like they had been around forever, and such works as "Ain't No Blues Today" (which probably dated back to at least the 1970s) and "Ain't No Sunshine" (not the Bill Withers hit) certainly did. So did "Why You Been Gone So Long," but that was no wonder, since it had been a country hit in 1969. As ever, Newbury was a master at expressing emotional pain brought on by dislocation or romantic discord, but he also expanded into a more general sense of dread. However drawn he was to darkness, though, he concluded with the formal statement of faith and family, "A Father's Prayer," underlying a basic paradox in his lifelong stance as an artist, that this poet of the depressed and dissolute had long since settled into a stable family life himself and, at 60, was now looking serenely toward his golden years. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Lulled by the Moonlight'
Release Date 2/29/2000
Tracks 17
Label Mountain Retreat
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
In 1994, Mickey Newbury gave his patient fans hope by releasing the live album Nights When I Am Sane, his first recording of any kind in six years and his first to contain any new material in 13 years. Two years later, he answered their prayers with Lulled By the Moonlight, his first new studio album consisting primarily of new material since 1981's After All These Years. Put out on his own record label, it was a typically eccentric effort. Always fond of recycling his own work, Newbury borrowed the track "Blue Sky Shining" from his 1979 album The Sailor as well as musical interludes from LPs dating back to 1969's Looks Like Rain; re-recorded "The Future Is Not What It Used to Be," which had first appeared on his 1971 album 'Frisco Mabel Joy; and included studio recordings of three of the four new songs that had appeared on Nights When I Am Sane. He also turned over one entire track on the album to Toni Jolene Clay, who co-wrote (with J. Weatherly), sang, played piano on, and produced "Silver Moon" with no apparent input from him. All those digressions, however, still left room on a 73-minute CD for 11 new (or at least previously unrecorded) Newbury compositions. The songwriter dedicated the album to Stephen Foster, with whom he must identify. Foster was the first man to become well-known as a songwriter, and he came up with material that has been absorbed into American popular music. Newbury, who has always shown a fondness for 19th century song styles, began this comeback collection with "Three Bells for Stephen," asking, "Do you remember me, dear hearts and gentle people?" His new songs were full of backward glances over a long life and were tinged with regret, which was a typical stance for him. But he could also be surprising. "Captured in Blue" was a doo wop love song on which his voice was reminiscent of fellow East Texan Don Henley, for example, while "Just Another Lovely Day" was a light, jazzy number, and "Freight Train Howlin'" a rocker. More characteristic were songs, like "Shades of '63" and "Time Was," that reflected philosophically on the past. Lulled By the Moonlight was not a masterpiece, which necessarily made it a disappointment given the high standard of the artist's best work, but it demonstrated that he continued to ply his craft a decade and a half after he had given up on a full-time performing career, and that was encouraging. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
After releasing 12 albums in 13 years (1968-81), Mickey Newbury dropped out of full-time recording to rest on his considerable song royalties. MCA Records released a best-of (Sweet Memories) in 1985, and he re-recorded some of his songs for Airborne (In a New Age) in 1988, but he did not really begin to re-emerge until the mid-1990s. This live album chronicles his 21-date tour of England in 1993, his first extensive bout of stage work in nearly two decades. (He helpfully explains in a stage remark that over the past 19 years, his concertizing has been restricted to a tour of Australia in 1984, a tour of Poland in 1988, and a few charity shows in the U.S. Actually, his live work in America has been more extensive than that, but not much.) It is curious, then, that when the disc was released belatedly in 1998, it was his third live recording and his second in four years. Newbury released Live at Montezuma Hall in 1973 and returned to recording with the concert album Nights When I Am Sane in 1994. On the latter, he employed a second guitarist, but all three records are spare efforts that focus on the singer and his guitar, and feature many of the same songs. "Cortelia Clark," "Easy Street," and "American Trilogy," heard here, are getting their second live releases, and "San Francisco Mabel Joy" is on all three albums. On his studio albums, Newbury's dirge-like performances are augmented with often elaborate arrangements, which relieves the gloom and the relentless tempo somewhat. In concert, his work can be forbidding unless you are already a fan, and especially for those who picked up Nights When I Am Sane four years earlier, Live in England is not an essential purchase. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Nights When I Am Sane'
Release Date 1/1/1994
Tracks 14
Label Winter Harvest
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Released by the tiny Nashville label Winter Harvest, Nights When I Am Sane was Newbury's first album in six years and his first live album since Live at Montezuma Hall 20 years earlier. Those decades may have deepened Newbury the singer's voice a bit, but it only made him a more powerful performer. As one would expect, Nights When I Am Sane is comprised of a batch of Newbury's most well-known songs, but the power these performances hold make them the definitive versions. With one guitar or at most one accompanist, Newbury has always been able to convey what most others would need an entire band to try to get to. Songs like "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" (bet you didn't know he wrote that, did ya?) come across with so much feeling, pathos, and depth that it's possible to see clear into the darkness in the soul of the man when he wrote it. When Newbury gets to his famous refrain on "Nights When I Am Sane," he's telling a hidden truth, one so obscured by legend and the grime of time and music-business bullsh*t that it almost slips though in its gentleness. "We would sweat and moan/Until the need in us was gone/In one another's arms all through the night," begins "What Will I Do Now," the track that ends this set. A song of a lover left to bear his grief in the darkness now that she's gone, Newbury's falsetto conveys the grief with so much empathy, it's hard to believe this isn't some man crying on his best friend's shoulder. Only Newbury would have the naked, unpretentious honesty to end a concert with a song like this, and only he could get away with it. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
After All These Years is completely different in content and production from its predecessor The Sailor. While "The Sailor" is a classic seafaring tragedy worthy of a film, "Song of Sorrow" and "Let's Say Goodbye One More Time" are both broken love songs, one in the aftermath of an affair and one at the moment of its breaking point. What they have to do with each other is only in Newbury's mind, but it works. Somehow from the vastness of the sea expressed in the suite's first song to the individual sitting alone in a room at night staring at a clock, we find the spectrum of human regret and grief. These songs -- most of them country songs although there is a strangely wonderful country-rock ballad called "Truly Blue" -- reveal for the first time Newbury's sense that he may have wasted his career. Truth be told, he may have been difficult to work with, but Nashville -- that great eater of talent -- never gave him a chance, considering him a songwriter rather than a recording artist. Evidence is on the waltz "That Was the Way It Was Then," a nostalgic lament for the 1950s. Never issued as a single, this track was later a hit for no less than three other artists and recorded by perhaps a dozen, yet none of them came close to the emotional depth of Newbury's version. Other standouts include "I Still Love You (After All These Years)," an astonishingly sincere non-corny homage to Newbury's parents. There is also the Dave Loggins-styled vocal on "Over the Mountain," co-written with Joe Henry, who was just beginning his career when this record was made, and wanted to be a country songwriter! ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Who would have thought that Mickey Newbury would issue a 100%, crackling fresh country-pop record in 1979? Produced by Ronnie Gant with (massive) string arrangements by Alan Moore at Cowboy Jack Clement's studio, The Sail reveals that Newbury knew what it took all the time, but by the time he let his muse follow him down the commercial country rabbit hole, it was too late. The first track, "Blue Sky Shinin'," is a country love song arranged and exquisitely performed as if written for Patsy Cline. Next, "Let's Have a Party" is perhaps Newbury's anthem, not because of its title, but because it's one of the most beautiful confessional songs he's ever written. The production by Gant is straightforward and Newbury's voice is clearly in the foreground. The sound effects are replaced with layers of instrumentation and backing vocals. Newbury's relaxed delivery offers the listener a way to see just how sincere these songs are. While there are no weak cuts, the aforementioned stand out. So does "Let It Go," done in 2/4 time, beginning as a country song and ending by transforming itself inside out into a gospel shouter. The Sailor, once again, refused to sell, perhaps because it was too late, perhaps because it was too early -- Merle Haggard and George Jones made records that sounded exactly like this only three years later and scored big. As great as this record is, and as good as Newbury knew it was, it was the same old story. Nashville's radio machine wasn't having it, and therefore the public never got the chance to make up its mind. In fact, the way Newbury's entire career was handled by Nashville is evidence enough to raze the entire town and start over. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Newbury hooks up with Bobby Bare as a producer and puts out Rusty Tracks, a record full of pedal steel guitars, fiddles, cut time rhythms, and lyrical darkness, for his first album for ABC/Hickory. This concentration on one music and its classic themes and rougher-edged production proved to be as great as anything he had done since his early records. "Makes Me Wonder if I Ever Said Goodbye" answers in true loner fashion his early '70s classic "She Never Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye," and the whispering gospel prayer "Bless Us All" takes the darkness Newbury held so firmly in his grasp and opens it up for all of us to be a part of; it expresses our own longing and wish for fulfillment. But it's the close of the album that knocks the listener out of her chair. Mirroring his own "American Trilogy" of half a decade before, Newbury strings together -- once more without seams -- four pieces of classic Americana with breathtakingly gorgeous arrangements: "Shenandoah," "That Lucky Old Sun," "Danny Boy," and "In the Pines." On this set, the orchestra appears and Newbury's singing is as good as anybody's ever was. He doesn't merely sing these songs -- he is them, a part and parcel of the fabric of the notes themselves and what they represent. Just when Americans were trying to forget who they were by embracing European disco and punk rock as well as dumbed-down versions of both country and jazz, Newbury reveals -- much to his own commercial detriment -- who and what we are as a nation. There is no more stunning finish to a Newbury record -- maybe anybody's record. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
