Album Review

Michael Ofjord [allmusic.com]

Though this album will never win any awards for depth or transcendence, it shows that C.W. McCall (aka William Fries) did have a way of investing his truck-driving songs with charm and humor. The Johnny Cash soundalike wades through ten selections that deal mostly with life on the highway, including the hits ''Wolf Creek Pass'' and ''Old Home Filler-Up an' Keep On a-Truckin' Cafe.'' Humor is the main element in most of the songs, and one can almost see McCall smiling his way through these tunes. (''Eight stools and a promise'' is one way that he describes the ''Old Home Filler-Up an' Keep On a-Truckin' Cafe.'') In ''Sloan,'' a song about a dog, McCall laments that ''he didn't have a license or shots or nuthin'/I thought he was a goner.'' Female backup singers on several cuts sound like they were rounded up from a local coffee shop, but they add an element of kitsch to the recordings, whether intended or not. One seeming exception to the tongue-in-cheek humor of most of the cuts is the last song, ''Glenwood Canyon.'' Lamenting the loss of natural habitat through development, it is surprisingly affecting and foreshadowed McCall's later political involvement in environmental issues.