Single Rose (Durango Rose, 2004)

Rosie Flores' second live outing is a world apart from 1999's honky-tonk band effort, "Dance Hall Dreams." This time out she's solo, with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a catalog of intimate, often nostalgic songs, between her and an adoring Nashville audience. Flores' warm introductions and her interaction with the crowd is born more of the folk-troubadour tradition (e.g., Loudon Wainwright III's recent "So Damn Happy") than the electric rockabilly of her earlier albums.

The opening pair, "Palamino Days" and "Mornin' Light," sets the disc's personal tone with a newly-penned autobiographies of Flores' musical youth and the road life it fostered. The title track gives Flores a torch to croon, and lynch-pins of her catalog, like "Bandera Highway," adapt beautifully to the solo treatment. Her sassy rock roots are here too, cast as folk blues on the originals "'59 Tweedle Dee" and "Little Bit More," and she closes with fiery finger-picking of Albert Lee's "Country Boy (Girl)."

Tammy Rogers guests on fiddle and James Intveld harmonizes on the co-written "Midnight to Moonlight." Add in a half-dozen new songs and you have a uniquely revealing view into Flores' music, both yesterday and today.