Thought you might want to read what some of the critics are sayin'.

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(Recorded live at Eddie's Attic, Atlanta, Georgia)

Cowboy Envy having fun but 'way serious' about band
By Holly Crenshaw
STAFF WRITER
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Like an old cowboy movie soundtrack, Cowboy Envy's music sways with the smooth, easy feel of three-part harmonies and a distinctively retro Western sensibility.

But the band's three musicians say despite their relaxed, good-natured shows, there's a lot of hard work that goes into capturing the precise vocal blends first popularIzed by cowboy bands in the '3Os and '40s.

"The three of us are having so much fun with this band," says Dede Vogt, who plays bass, mandolin, harmonica and sings with the group. "But we're way serious about it, too."

Garbed in Western wear with their hobbyhorse sidekicks in tow - Vogt, guitarist/vocalist Kathleen Hatfield and vocalist Berné Poliakoff run through songs by artists like Patsy Montana, The Sons of the Pioneers and Riders in the Sky as if they'd been singing them together for years.

In fact, the band was formed when the three musicians - all well-established local performers - decided it would be fun to join forces and harmonize on classic cowboy tunes like "Cool Water" and "Tumbling Tumbleweeds."

"People of our generation who have kids tell us they want their children to hear this kind of music because that's what they heard when they were little," Hatfield says. "And it seems to be so evocative - there's something about this music that brings back childhood associations and memories," she adds. "Before you know it, people will start talking about their first holster or cowboy hat or BB gun, or how they used to watch Roy Rogers and Dale Evans on TV."

Reprinted with permission of Creative Loafing
Record Review by Gregory Nicoll

COWBOY ENVY
Real Cowboy Girl
Niki Viki Music

As proud owner of a souvenir jacket from The Rifleman, I confess to more than a little "cowboy envy" myself; and I'll also admit that my record collection is heavier on Frankie Laine and Tex Ritter than Elvis or the Beatles. Raised in an era when Matt Dillon was a pistol-packer not a brat-packer, I grew up loving songs about sagebrush and six-guns. This musical genre falls into three distinct subcategories. First, there are Actual Frontier Ditties, most of them rewritten renditions of Irish folk ballads and old sea chanteys. You don't find many of those on Real Cowboy Girl, the new CD by the all-female Atlanta trio Cowboy Envy, but you will discover a heapin' helping from the second subcategory: Rodeo & Chuck Wagon Tunes from the Singing Cowboy Era.

Wrapping their deliciously smooth Andrews Sisters-style harmonies around Gene Autry's "Back in the Saddle Again," Cowboy Envy provide the next best thing to the l9th century. (Autry may have been a cheeseball, but unlike most boob tube buckaroos, at least he wrote of frontier hand-guns with the proper caliber of .44-40, not the military .45!) "Real Cowboy Girl" is even better suited to this estrogenic ensemble - it's a gen-u-ine '30s tune in which a woman fantasizes about men's gear ("I want to wear a ten-gallon hat, And a belt that is four inches wide"). This might provide the trio a perfect theme song if their own "Cowboy Envy" (which lead singer "Frenchy" Poliakoff wrote in perfect mimicry of the style, complete with yodels) didn't already fill the bill.

Another original, "Born To Be Branded," is composed from the cow's point of view and packs a feminist punch ("At the end of a fiery stick... a cow has no say!"); but "Cool Water" showcases the trio's beautiful ensemble singing and backup harmonies, underscored by instrumentation that's tastefully understated (the sole exception being DeDe "Too Short" Vogt's electric bass, which kicks like a loaded Colt).

There are a few misfires on the disc - "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" is pretty instead of gritty, and Cole Porter's "Don't Fence Me In" is overly familiar (even Clint Eastwood recorded it) - but "Buffalo K" Hatfield's solo reading of "Home on the Range" is truly stunning, no matter how well-trampled its lyric path.

The third and final subcategory of cattle-trail tunes is the Absurd Macho Movie Theme, and the Envy bunch delivers the great grandma of them all: "High Ridin' Woman. Often incorrectly attributed to the Sons of the Pioneers (as it is here, in David Chamberlain's otherwise excellent liner notes), this male-chauvinist antique was actually written by film composer Harry Sukinan for the 1957 CinemaScope bulletfest Forty Guns, the most bizarre gender-switched western of its decade (yup, even more bent than Johnny Guitar) in which a black-clad Barbara Stanwyck kept her personal posse of pistoleros in line with the lash of her bullwhip. When the three throats of Cowboy Envy wrap their heavenly harmonies around this number ("She commands and men obey/They're just putty in her hands so they say"), the threesome burns hot as branding irons.

Wagons Ho!
AMG EXPERT REVIEW

CowbovEnvy is at it again riding the musical range and tipping their 24-gallon hats to the cowboy icons of old. Berné Poliakoff, DeDeVogt, and Kathleen Hatfield, known respectively as Frenchy, TooShort, and Buffalo K, are CowboyEnvy, and lest you think it's all in good fun, it is. But these gals can sing (even yodel), and their original compositions sidle right up next to traditional tunes like good cowhands should. The lovely melody of "Sunrise on the Plains" was penned by Buffalo K, but could just as well have come from Gene Autry. Their love and reverence for this genre is unmistakable, as evidenced in the spot-on harmonies of the classic "Red River Valley," but never fear, their humor comes sneaking through on songs like "Prairie Rose" and "Round up Time." And Frenchy's "I Left His Heart (In San Francisco)" is self-proclaimed as "the only known cowboy tribute to TonyBennett." Fair enough. Sometimes you can judge a CD by its cover. In the case of Wagons Ho!, what you see is exactly what you get. Not many folks these days sing of coyotes, plains, wagons, and sage. Maybe they should. Harking back to the simplicity and innocence of a time long lost, this record is a rare delight. -Kelly McCartney