Hunting For Hogan

There have been a couple of countrified comebacks that have warmed the cockles of my heart recently. Thad Cockrell released his first solo album in six years and Nanci Griffith released her first really good album in about fifteen - like many of her fans I kept buying her albums durng that period more in hope than expectation, and we have finally been rewarded for our patience.

Short of Elvis or Charlie Rich being resurrected the comeback I most want to see now is a new album from Kelly Hogan. It has been eight years since her last one and in that time we have had to get by with the occasional guest appearance on other people's album. Now, that is better than nothing, but it is nowhere near good enough.

I'm hopelessly in love with her voice, which in some respects has echoes of a female Thad but which I can't begin to do justice to in words. Suffice to say she did a version of "Rubber Duckie" from Sesame Street on a Bloodshot Records kids' compilation that is one of the most erotic performances I have ever heard. I am not going to post that because it would be inappropriate on a Sunday and I'm not sure you are mature enough to cope. Instead here is a selection from her all too slim back catalogue:

"Funnel Of Love" - The Jody Grind (Wanda Jackson cover from "Lefty's Deceiver", 1992)

"Papa Was A Rodeo" - Kelly Hogan & The Pine Valley Cosmonauts (Magnetic Fields cover and possible greatest performance ever from "Beneath The Country Underdog", 2000)

"No, Bobby Don't" - Kelly Hogan (from "Because It Feel Good", 2001)

"Dues" - Kelly Hogan (from "A Tribute to the Soundtrack of Robert Altman's 'Nashville', 2002)

Here is a great clip of Kelly, Spooner Oldham and the Drive-By Truckers doing "I'm Your Puppet".

Come back soon, Kelly. Or marry me. One of the two.