Tear Time (The Music Room, 2000)

Cranking up this new CD from Ted Roddy's Tearjoint Troubadours feels just like swinging open a louvre door on a Saturday night. And from the first line of the opening number, you know just what sort of joint you've stumbled into: a raucous barroom with a packed-out dancefloor and a few dimly-lit corners for the sleazy end of the evening.

Although this is only Roddy's second full-length release, he's been part of the furniture around Austin's music community for a couple of decades. And if Roddy is a piece of furniture, he's surely a barstool; this is a hard-drinking album, and any chardonnay-sippers or teetotallers will already have scampered for the door by the time Roddy hollers "I like whiskey!"a few songs in.

Stylistically, Roddy is all over the shop, with hard-swinging honky tonk and rockabilly tempered with tex-mex and cajun flavors. The roster of musicians assembled by Jim Stringer's Music Room collective brings sparkle and verve to Roddy's straight-up songwriting; Karen Poston's vibrant harmonies give Roddy's already robust vocals the strength of a double shot. Bloody marvellous stuff.