A late-'70s, longhaired hard-country hero, Wendel Adkins was born in Ohio but traveled far and wide looking for his big break. He was playing a gig in Vegas when he met Willie Nelson, who invited him to come to Texas and join his band. Later he toured with country icons such as David Allan Coe and George Jones, and has released several honkytonk-drenched true-country records over the years.
Wendel Adkins "Sundowners" (Motown/Hitsville Records, 1977) (LP)
(Produced by Ray Huff, Tret Fure & Randy Nicklaus)
It's anybody's guess how Wendell Adkins wound up on Motown's short-lived country side-project (or why Motown tried to crack into the country market to begin with) but this widely-distributed, Hollywood-produced album is kind of a glorious mess. The stylistic debt to Waylon Jennings is pretty blatant, though oddly enough Adkins sounds more like what Waylon would sound like several years later, rather than the pure, godlike entity of Waylon's contemporary late '70s incarnation. The arrangements are mostly wildly over the top -- thick, overwrought, overpowering -- and Adkins' vocals are equally hard to connect with: he's just trying too damn hard. It's the LA country-rock sound gone mad, with contributors that include West Coast heavyweights such as Jerry Cole and J.D. Maness, as well as engineering assist and backing vocals by Tret Fure, who was still trying to make it in the rock scene and hadn't yet dropped out to pioneer the early '80s "women's music" scene. Anyway, this album is a real studio scene mish-mosh with a palpable see-what-sticks vibe. Which isn't to say this record doesn't also have a lot to recommend it: if you actually dig late-vintage Waylon (or his many imitators) then you'll probably want to track this down. If you can struggle past the dense, grinding production, a lot of the songs are compelling, notably Eddy Raven's "I Don't Like Leaving You," as well as several by David Patton, an early 'Seventies country-rock pioneer who had kind of fallen by the wayside as the decade wore on. Definitely worth a spin, though potentially challenging.
Wendel Adkins "Live At The Whiskey River" (Texas Records, 1979) (LP)
Wendel Adkins "Live At Gilley's" (Gilley's Records, 1983) (LP)
Wendel Adkins "Cowboy Singer" (Mill Records, 1984)
Wendel Adkins "If That Ain't Country" (Mill Records, 1984)
Wendel Adkins "I Can't Let You Be A Memory" (Mill Records, 1984) (LP)
Wendel Adkins "Feet On The Ground" (Mill Records, 1986)
Wendel Adkins "Honky Tonkin Texas Style Hell Yeah" (Texas Records, 2005)
Wendel Adkins "Born With The Blues" (2010)
