"We take country back to the roots of where country was before all of this pop-country stuff. We attract an audience who doesn't know much about alt-country and then the old country music fans who aren't getting what they want from new country. They get it from us." Gary Roadarmel

Track List

1. Screwed Blue

2. Halfway There (I'm Gone)

3. Golden Chain of Hate

4. Angel Without Wings

5. Drunkard and the Angel

6. Don't Bury Me

7. Old Kentucky Home

8. Middle Tennessee

9. Slip Inside the House

10. Crosses to Hang

11. I've Got  A Hedge

www.porterhall.com

www.slewfootrecords.com

Porter Hall, TN  bellies up to the bar and kicks back a potent shot of honky tonk whisky that'll darn near knock your socks off with their Slewfoot Records debut: Welcome to Porter Hall, TN.

A word of advice, you might want to space out the chasers because you'll be wanting to remember where you put this CD when it's finished it's first run through. All eleven of the tunes, eight of them self- penned, will leave you hankering for more.

If rough-edged, been there, done that country is your style, Welcome to Porter Hall, TN more than fits the bill. With sometimes brutal, disturbing honesty, Porter Hall shines with impressive lead vocals and gilded harmonies that twang with a candid resonance.

The town of  Porter Hall, Tennessee is an imaginary, nowhere place where the pain and heartache is real. Small Town USA, the place you grow up longing to leave when you're young, and would die to return to in your old age. Average, mundane, day to day life, timeless stories told over and over ---

Molly Conley and Gary Roadarmel, are Porter Hall, TN, but their music is hardly average and mundane. Together they transform Porter Hall into a mirage of timeless stories of heartache and love, illustrated with vivid metaphors set to soul-filled twang and acoustic Appalachian melodies that are eerily reminiscent of the glory days of Hank Sr.

Hailing from Murfreesboro TN, the duo made the conversion to roots based country from their punk rock beginnings, in 2000 sliding into the acoustic melodies of bluegrass, and later adding the a touch of twang with a pedal steel guitar.

Highlights are many. In fact, it's hard to single out what is more compelling - the graphic images conjured up by the lyrics, or the voices that sing them.

If saccharine-sweet, 'perfect world' love songs are gnawing on your last nerve, check out the haunting candor of Gene Wilcox's Golden Chain of Hate:

Now I'm lost and lonesome
I curse her name each night
I know that she hates me now
And pray that she'd die

or 'Drunkard and an Angel' the barroom confessions of  a man drinking to forget, while Jones plays on the jukebox, or the stunning ballad 'Middle Tennessee,' that's in a league of its own.

Rockabilly twang doesn't get any better than "Screwed Blue" a Hank III style honky tonker. Throw in the offhanded, sardonic swipe of 'Crosses to Hang' and the bluegrass influences of the charismatic 'Old Kentucky Home' and you've got one heck of a country album. And that's just the beginning.

Welcome to Porter Hall, TN, kick your shoes off and enjoy. With roots strongly in place this debut album is indeed something to write home about.

Laurie Joulie Take Country Back May 2002