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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
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