Twister

Steve March's second CD, Twister, opens with A Six Pack Away From Trouble. The song immediately throws you into that old Southern honky-tonk with visions of Hank Williams Sr., playing his guitar amidst a crowd of rowdy fans shrouded in cigarette smoke and the malted aroma of stale beer in the air. Listen to these songs and you will know the singer sees the world through deeply felt lived experience, gathered among working folks who have lived hard and maybe even played a little harder. 'Steve writes from a place of honest observation and lived experience, says the CD's co-producer Robert Donnan. Donnan says Twister is old school country music, that harkens back to the Hank Williams school of music. The songs on Twisters tell stories. Working in a chicken processing plant in Hamlet, N.C., workers were trapped inside a locked building when a fire broke out. Many of the workers were single moms. The incident was etched into March's psyche and comes out in the song, 'Lullaby.' That struck me on such a deep level, says March of the Hamlet fire, because I was raised by a single mom. I used to think when my mom went on to work what would happen to me if she didn't come back. In a day when digital music asks listeners to hear just one song, March says Twister is meant to be absorbed as an entire album, stories strung together to illustrate a larger picture. It is life laid out in song. It is his many experiences wrapped up into music that touches on that old school country, blues and even gospel. The moods vary from the poignant, 'I'll Never Get To Heaven Livin' This Way' to pure unabashed fun, as in 'Make Me Feel Good Tonight.' This album, March says, is about devastation and loss, but it's also about the celebration of life. In the song's title track, a tornado that takes a woman's husband off into the sky shows 'no mercy.' The twister will 'break your heart, break your mind, leave a trail of blood behind.' Although the CD was six years in the creation, March says it was also recorded as live sessions. That fact gives it a raw quality that is hard to find in the highly digitized music Nashville produces today. Edgy, offbeat, and spirited, Twister is pure American story-telling presented in an alt-country sound that harkens back to the days of Hank, Sr. And fans of that sound will not be disappointed in this collection of Americana storytelling in song. (Robert Kelly-Goss, The Daily Advance)