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One live album and one solo release

by Jack Neely

Are You Through Yet? we assume, but wouldn't swear, is the V-roys' last album. We can only hope we have reason to take that question mark seriously. This live album, recorded at the legendary Down Home in Johnson City just before they announced their unexpected breakup, has none of the doomy dissonance of a band in its death throes. If some of its inflections sound a little more self-conscious than on the studio CDs, the album comes across like another great V-roys show, disciplined and energetic, last month or three years ago.

The CD doesn't introduce anything new. All of the original V-roys songs that appear on the live album also appear on their studio CDs. Their performances were always so tight that, except for a drum solo here or there, these renditions aren't significantly different from the studio recordings.

So if you have the other two albums, why buy this one? One reason is the covers. Their studio records have been principally original stuff; this live finale reminds us that the V-roys could add spark and twang to other songwriters' work. Through Yet opens, surprisingly, with Neil Young's slow classic, "Motion Pictures" (which somehow morphs into the V-roys' own high-speed house-shaker, "Cry"). Four other covers follow, from Loudon Wainwright's dirgey "Out of This World" to a rousing, barely country version of the Replacements' rocker "IOU." In many of the V-roys' live shows, they'd suddenly soar into the Las' alternative anthem "There She Goes"; if it hadn't been included on this album, we might have forgotten.

Through Yet also includes fine versions of some of the V-roys' best, including "Window Song" and "Sooner or Later." The album paces its solid rock with a couple of Miller's signature country-inflected pieces, "Mary" and "Virginia Way."

It's just barely live. The sound quality's good for a live record. The performances are nearly faultless; the instruments sound studio sharp. The audience sounds eerie and remote, wailing like people trapped in a burning house down the street.

Some who've heard the CD remark that it's not quite as wild as the celebratory V-roys shows they remember. If it doesn't convey what it felt like to be slightly drunk in a crowded Mercury Theater in 1996, well, that just shows the limits of digital technology.

Still, it's a document of a band at its peak. More than anything, listening to Are You Through Yet? makes you hate the whole record industry; the V-Roys were a great American rock 'n' roll band that had the talent and energy to outclass the Top 40. They deserve to be remembered as more than the most popular band in Knoxville at the end of the 20th century.

Now imagine this: a fresh CD of music you've never heard, songs written by one of the V-roys and featuring three of the four V-roys—maybe assisted by other talented musicians, like frequent Scott Miller collaborator John Taylor on banjo, future V-roys lawyer Scott Carpenter on guitar and onetime Judybat Peggy Hambright on fiddle, with guitar icon Terry Hill at the controls.

As it happens, it's already been done. Don't Bail is Mike Harrison's latest CD, and his earliest—recorded back in 1993, months before the original Viceroys formed, and nearly three years before Harrison joined the group as co-guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. Hardly known in Knoxville, Harrison then lived in rural West Tennessee. At the urging of his childhood friend, drummer Jeff Bills, Harrison drove 300 miles to Knoxville's Southern Sound studios and made one cassette tape for commercial distribution.

For six years, Don't Bail has been an oddity evolving into a legend. Many who've heard the tape have thought it deserved wider exposure. (Digitally remastered, the CD sounds clean, but also lops out two of the tape's original tracks.) It's a welcome reproduction of that session with some luminous songs: the opener, "Pick You Up," is a bright modern-pop piece that deserved rotation on alternative radio in 1993. It may make it, yet. There's also some full-tilt rock 'n' roll here, like "Small Town." Overall, Don't Bail is diverse variations on a country theme, with plenty of openings for Miller's harp, Hambright's fiddle, and Taylor's banjo.

Miller also helps out with background vocals, including a hilarious exchange on "Yard Sale" that sounds like something from a John Bean tape. Several of Harrison's songs are funny or sentimental short stories, something like Lyle Lovett might have done after Maybelle Carter gave him a good talking to about the sunny side. You may listen to "Picnic Table" a few times, trying to discern something sinister about it, only to realize it may just be about a picnic table in a back yard. Harrison's known for his pop hooks, and they're here. And a lost-love song like "Kiss the Bride" is bitter enough to be pass Miller's patented pH test for acidity. But what you come away with, because they startle you, are Harrison's ironic reflections about family, the obligations and conflicts that still weigh more heavily on Southerners.

Old as it is, Don't Bail is a refreshing collection of diverse pop, and a promise of things to come. See, the V-roys aren't completely disbanded; Harrison and Bills will keep playing together. Lynn Point Records, publisher of Don't Bail, is the business they're forming to promote their work.

Both Are You Through Yet? and Don't Bail can seem more like historical documents than new releases. But they're also great fun to listen to on a Saturday night. And since the boys went their separate ways, we're finding ourselves more lonesome these weekends than ever.