After All These Years (album)
| After All These Years | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by Mickey Newbury | ||||
| Released | 1981 | |||
| Recorded | 1981 | |||
| Genre | Country | |||
| Length | 35:13 | |||
| Label | Mercury | |||
| Mickey Newbury chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [1] |
After All These Years is the 1981 album by singer-songwriter Mickey Newbury, considered the concluding album of his remarkable 1970s run, it was the last album he would record for seven years. The album is very different in tone from its predecessor and revives Newbury's talent for song suites with "The Sailor/Song Of Sorrow/Let's Say Goodbye One More Time." Other highlights on the album include "That Was The Way It Was Then" and "Over The Mountain."
After All These Years was collected for CD issue on the eight-disc Mickey Newbury Collection from Mountain Retreat, Newbury's own label in the mid-1990s, along with nine other Newbury albums from 1969-1981.
Recording and composition
After All These Years was recorded in producer's Norbert Putnam's 1875 mansion the Bennett House In Franklin, Tennessee. After the glossy production of Newbury's last album The Sailor, After All These Years was a return of sorts to the orchestrated melodies and haunting song suites of his earlier albums. "The Sailor," which had been left off its namesake album, features a harrowingly darker sound that hearkens back to Newbury's earlier work, "painted with broad strokes and with metaphorical allusions to heaven, hell, and earth."[2] The song also contains autobiographical references to Newbury's wife and child: "Susie in the kitchen doin' dishes, Chris and all his toys have gone to bed." The song transitions to the forlorn "Song of Sorrow", where Newbury confesses he is "a fool and a dreamer." As Tom Jurek marvels in his AllMusic review, "Somehow from the vastness of the sea expressed in the suite's first song to the individual sitting alone in a room at night staring at a clock, we find the spectrum of human regret and grief." For the most part, the songs contained on the LP speak to a longing for the old days, but with more optimism than on Newbury's Frisco Mabel Joy album, which explored the same theme. "I Still Love You (After All These Years)", for example, which Newbury wrote for his wife Susan,[3] expresses gratitude for the love and companionship of a lover in the face of hardship:
- Just the thought of you still takes my breath away
- After all these years what more can I say
- You are the light that guides me
- Through my darkest day
Newbury biographer Joe Ziemer contends "Let's Say Goodbye One More Time" and "That Was The Way It Was Then" are "sincere offerings of the heart of a card-carrying romantic."[4] The latter would become a hit for no less than three other country artists. The lilting country waltz "Country Boy Saturday Night" is also steeped in nostalgia, while "Truly Blue" boasts a contemporary country sound and instrumentation that had become more common on Newbury's albums in the late seventies.
Reception
AllMusic gives After All These Years a four-out-of-five star review, stating, "These songs - most of them country songs although there is a strangely wonderful country-rock ballad called 'Truly Blue' - reveal for the first time Newbury's sense that he may have wasted his career."
Newbury biographer Joe Ziemer calls "Over the Mountain "an idyllic promise of pastoral happiness..."
Track listing
All tracks by Mickey Newbury except where noted
- "The Sailor" – 5:21
- "Song of Sorrow" – 3:22
- "Let's Say Goodbye One More Time" – 3:35
- "That Was the Way It Was Then" – 2:41
- "Country Boy Saturday Night" – 3:27
- "Truly Blue" – 3:41
- "Just as Long as That Someone Is You" – 3:26
- "Over the Mountain" (Newbury, Joe Henry) – 3:26
- "Catchers in the Rye" – 2:52
- "I Still Love You (After All These Years)" – 3:27
Personnel
- Steve Brantley – vocals
- Bruce Dees – vocals
- Gene Eichelberger – engineer
- Steve Gibson – guitar
- Jon Goin – guitar
- David Hungate – bass
- Shane Keister – piano
- Sheldon Kurland – strings
- Dave Loggins – guitar, vocals
- Mike Manna – piano
- Terry McMillan – harmonica
- Weldon Myrick – steel guitar
- Mickey Newbury – guitar, vocals
- Bobby Ogdin – piano
- Norbert Putnam – guitar
- Cindy Reynolds – harp
- Buddy Spicher – fiddle
- James Stroud – drums
- Jack Williams – bass
References
- ↑ After All These Years (album) at AllMusic
- ↑ Zeimer 2015, p. 208.
- ↑ Zeimer 2015, p. 202.
- ↑ Zeimer 2015, p. 209.