Texas to Tennessee

For every major pop star, it seems, there are a dozen (if not a dozen dozen) essentially similar artists who don't achieve the same level of success. Bob Cheevers is a veteran singer/songwriter who has been plying his trade for decades, since he moved from Memphis, TN, to Los Angeles, CA, and ended up in the Peppermint Trolley Company, which provided the theme song to the late-'60s/early-'70s TV series Love, American Style. Since then, Cheevers has worked primarily in the field of commercial jingles while also writing and recording his own songs. Texas to Tennessee well illustrates his influences. First, there is his voice, which is a dead ringer for Willie Nelson's reedy tenor, that is, if Willie Nelson sang on the beat. Cheevers has expressed his admiration for Jackson Browne and Neil Young (the Neil Young of "Heart of Gold," that is), and you can hear that admiration in the country-inflected folk-rock arrangements of his songs. As a songwriter, however, he is more beholden to the Southwest tradition of Jerry Jeff Walker, Townes Van Zandt, and especially Guy Clark, turning out story-songs in which he reminisces about a rural Southern past and celebrates a variety of locations connected by cars and highways: Savannah, Texas, Tennessee, Memphis, and Amarillo, just to cite the ones in the song titles. Cheevers is unquestionably talented, but he is also highly derivative. And that's the reason that, like those dozens and dozens of artists who sound like much bigger stars (or combinations of them), he remains known best to industry insiders and the fans who have picked up on him through his performances.