Taos News, 1/7/99 by Melody Romancito

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Hired Hands has a new compact disc, released just prior to Christmas, called "Stuff That Works". The Hired Hands are Eddy Lee Bullington of Angel Fire, Don Richmond of Alamosa, CO, and Jim Bradley of Taos. The band has undergone a couple of changes and has experimented with personnel in recent memory, but the dust has finally settled. What survives is a trio with an acoustic style that is known in radio format parlance as "Americana".

You've heard this music before. It's a meld of what is essentially every kind of music that might be heard in North America, played on instruments like acoustic guitar, banjo, dobro, pedal steel and bass. It could include dulcimers, accordions, harmonicas, tablas and trombones. You name it - if it's in America it would fit in "Americana" music.

"Americana" has all the roots and tangled styles that make up our vast and varied culture as it is manifested in the Western United States. Country swing cowboys, rancheras and Rocky Mountain freight trains. It is made up of old folk songs, haunting melodies, bluegrass runs, blues licks and peculiar little waltzes.

There's an unconscious quality some performers possess. They have difficulty promoting themselves and rarely do they even know how to think about all that business stuff when there are songs to be played. The members of Hired Hands are down to earth and modest, just like the name of the band implies.

If Bullington hadn't needed help with his sound equipment one Monday night just before Christmas, I might never have heard the CD. But events conspired. Bullington had a solo gig at the Sagebrush Inn and his music system sustained some sort of damage on the way down from Angel Fire. He needed an amplifier and was short of cash. His phone call got me out of bed and into a cold night. It was a trip into town to pick up the equipment, then back to the south of town to the 'Brush.

After making sure the system worked he handed me 420 patched together with torn singles and a couple of fives. Then he pawed through a small cardboard box and handed me a copy of the new CD. "Here," he said. "Take this and thanks a million. Don't be a stranger." He gave me the CD because he had gotten me out of bed to help him, not because I could write it up or review it, though that's what ultimately happened.

I pocketed the CD and went home, where both my husband and my daughter were fast asleep. It was just 9:30 PM. Bullington was just getting to the gist of the first set, with two more to go. A couple of the regular dancers would be twirling counterclockwise on the dance floor. The cigarette smoke would be getting a little heavy and the television over the bar would be showing sports figures in endless recap from a game played somewhere back east. In sharp contrast, where I was, it may as well have been the depths of midnight. The rooms were filled with "Zs". Everyone but me and the cat was asleep. I put on the headphones and listened to "Stuff That Works" and was transported to a quintessential night in my ultimate memory with Hired Hands on stage.

Though more polished than any live performance can ever be, the album has wonderful depth and begins with the ringing jangle that's become the rallying "cry to listen" in Rocky Mountain-style Americana music. "One More Dollar" puts a hand out and a best foot forward, with Bullington's buttery smooth vocals and everyone's solid playing on the first cut. For a one-two punch there's nothing more compelling and American than a train song heavy with longing, and "Freight Train", a song in the school of new Bluegrass, is right on schedule. "Copperline is one of those James Taylor songs like all of his best - they are nearly to beautiful. With Bullington's vocals and Richmond's layering of banjo and pedal steel guitar, Hired Hands does as good a job as Taylor or anyone else ever could.

"Don't Walk Away From Love" is a tune penned by Bullington and Richmond. Besides the band, Gordon Burt adds fiddle, and integral ingredient for this swing number that cooks. The surprise cover song for the album is an Elton John and Bernie Taupin song, "I Need You to Turn To". It fully yields to its old English folk song while neatly skirting the British pop queen origins. It is these kinds of songs that turn up in a band's song list that reveal as much or more about how the band sees itself than any originals ever can. It's a beautiful inclusion for this album. Meanwhile, back in the states, "Nothin' to Write Home About" and Bullington's "One Way or Another" cover cover country swing turf again, while "Tried, True, and Tested" is in the style of a traditional cowboy waltz with true blue sentiments and trusty western turns of phrase. "Stuff That Works," the last and title song on the album, reveals its royal "Americana" music bloodline. A song by Guy Clark and Rodney Crowell, the song is at once the simplest and most complex number on the release. The lyrics talk about "an old guitar that won't ever stay in tune/ I like the way it sounds in a dark and empty room" and "stuff that works, stuff that holds up/ the kind of stuff you reach for when you fall."

That's kind of like this album. these are songs that work, songs that hold up and sound good even if you're by yourself in a darkened room. These songs are real by the hard-working Hired Hands. Like the liner notes say, "We agreed that even though the CD must be a faithful representation of our live show, we still wanted to offer a little more." They did, and we gratefully accept "Stuff That Works."

The album, by the way, was recorded and mixed by the band at Richmond's studio up in Alamosa. They can be contacted at Howlin' Dog/Habanero Records, P.O. Box 825, Alamosa, CO 81101.