You Better Run

Veteran singer/guitarist Billy C. Farlow turns out another album of roadhouse blues-rock with You Better Run. Although best known for his tenure in the neo-Western swing band Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Farlow sticks to the blues, mostly the electric blues, here. The only exception, ironically given its title, is in "Don't You Wanna' Rock?," in which he demonstrates that he can be just as forceful sticking to an acoustic guitar, plus harmonica. On "Juke House Woman," the instrumentation is just an electric guitar and harmonica, calling to mind John Lee Hooker, with whom Farlow has played. Elsewhere, he employs a rhythm section, playing in familiar blues-rock arrangements from the stomp of "Good Rockin' Mama" to the slow blues of "Don't It Get Lonely." Farlow has a husky tenor with plenty of grit, and he uses it to address subjects that rarely stray from the barroom and may be summed up in a title like "Good Whiskey, Bad Women." However bad the women may be, the whiskey (along with, as another title has it, beer, gin, and wine) is good and keeps the singer sufficiently lubricated to rock until closing time and beyond.