Tommy Conwell Rumble/Guitar Trouble CD

Tommy Conwell & the Young Rumblers: Tommy Conwell (vocals, guitar); Billy Kemp (guitar); Rob Miller (piano, organ, background vocals); Paul Slivka (bass guitar, background vocals); Jim Hannum (drums).

In 2007, American Beat paired Tommy Conwell & the Young Rumblers' two major-label albums -- 1988's Rumble and its 1990 follow-up, Guitar Trouble -- as a two-fer. Most bar bands aren't fortunate enough to cut one great song, but Tommy Conwell & the Young Rumblers pulled off a killer with "I'm Not Your Man," the first song and single on Rumble. It's a lean, mean slice of attitude and raunch, sanded somewhat by the major-label production they received -- the kind that was applied to any major-label act at the tail end of the '80s. Arriving in the big leagues just when Stevie Ray Vaughan was turning into a superstar, Conwell & the Young Rumblers were give perhaps a bit more polish than they really deserved -- enough to slide them onto the AOR charts but not enough to remove that growling East Coast attitude that gives Rumble enduring appeal even when the sound of the record feels a bit slick, a bit like a rejected campaign for Miller Light because Eric Clapton had a sudden crisis of conscience after "After Midnight." Where Conwell stumbles on Rumble is when he guns for anthems pitched halfway between John Mellencamp and John Cafferty, as when the first side screeches to a halt on "Love's on Fire." Conwell gets things twisting again almost immediately with the clever boogie "Workout," which is pitched much closer to his comfort zone of revved-up old-time rock & roll, performed with more wit, swagger, and verve than George Thorogood. Rumble doesn't hit that target quite as often as you'd like, but almost all of the misses feel like concessions to get Conwell & the Young Rumblers on the radio, whether it's the stiff, sequenced production -- not enough to kill a shuffle like "Everything They Say Is True" but enough to hamper it -- or those wannabe crossovers. But, as post-SRV crossover productions go, this has some life in it and it's never enough to erase the power of the album's best songs -- the urgent "Half a Heart" (their best stab at Springsteen); the tightly wound Bo Diddley rocker "Tell Me What You Want Me to Be"; the nasty boogie "Walkin' on the Water"; and "I'm Not Your Man," which is as great a roots rocker as the late '80s produced, and reason enough for the group to get its shot at the big time.

It's clear that Tommy Conwell & the Young Rumblers were given a bigger budget on his second album, 1990's Guitar Trouble, a record that has clean, slick punch thanks to Dwight Yoakam producer Pete Anderson and star cameos from the likes of Chuck Berry pianist Johnnie Johnson. Anderson's presence and his drafting of Johnson conspire to give Conwell a roots rock credibility he never aspired to in the first place, probably because he was writing boogies like "Let Me Love You Too" to get the barroom rocking -- and when he wasn't doing that, he could toss off a bit of Sun rockabilly in the title track or turn introspective in songs like "I'm Seventeen," an angst anthem that plays like shorthand Paul Westerberg. Instead of picking up in these two almost contradictory instincts in Conwell, Anderson pushes him toward easily digestible roots rock, possibly on the label's urging, so he winds up with a generic boogie like "Nice 'n Naughty" and too-clean blues shuffles like "Do Right" that threaten to turn him into bluesy background music. Conwell was better than that -- and, besides, he "Didn't Want to Sing the Blues," as he says on one of the better co-written tunes here -- and he is able to show his skills a few times onGuitar Trouble, but this was a troubled project, caught between Conwell's blue-collar roots and the label's aspirations, so it sounds compromised in a way Rumble never does. Like that record, the best moments are quite

2 LPs on 1 CD: RUMBLE (1988) / GUITAR TROUBLE (1990).

Additional personnel: Bruce Hornsby (piano, organ).