Track Listing
1. Cotton-Eye Joe
2. Hittin' the Hay
3. Riding Alone
4. Wish You Were Here
5. Mary Lou
6. Old Pop in an Oak
7. Nowhere in Idaho
8. Sad But True Story of Ray Mingus, The
9. Fat Sally Lee
10. Shooter
11. McKenzie Brothers
12. Rolling Home
13. Wild and Free - (remix)
14. Cotton-Eye Joe - (slide to the side mix)
| Details | | Contributing Artists: | Terry McMillan | | Producer: | Rednex | | Distributor: | BMG (distributor) | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Personnel includes: Goran Danielsson, Annika Ljungberg, Michelle Anenberg, Cool James, Pat Reiniz, Janne Ericsson, Zeb Macahan, Henrik Widen, Stefan Cevaco, Sir Een, Anders Hansson (vocals); Bjorn Lagberg (vocals, bass); Jean-Paul Wall (vocals, whistle); Henrik Jansson, Anders Hellquist, Clint Eastwood, Jerry McPherson (guitar); Uffe Sterling (steel guitar); Gary Johansson, Kjell Johansson (banjo); Bosse Nilsson (violin); Terry McMillan (harmonica); Ari Haatainen (accordion); Henrik Widen (piano); Brian Tankersley (piano, bass); Anders Lovmark (drums).
Recorded at Future Crew Studios, Cheiron Studios, Eurosound Studio, Janglers Inn, Hansson Studios, Stockholm, Sweden.
Rednex, a Swedish band, plays square-dance music with a techno beat, and had an instant dance-floor novelty hit with the opening track of this debut album. "Cotton-Eye Joe," which shows up again, remixed, as the album's final track, is an old American folk song, but Rednex gives it a new European treatment. The sawing fiddle rides atop a sawing synthesizer, and the brief, bubbly banjo break is set to an electronic Eurobeat.
The rest of the album maintains the same basic pattern: old saws from the American West twisted like spaghetti into new sounds from the European West. "Riding Alone" is the old I-ain't-got-no-home story; "McKenzie Brothers" is an exaggerated outlaw tale. Occasionally the techno beat is abandoned for a straight cowboy sound, but the toungue-in-cheek feel never goes away. This is a band proud to wear its corniness on its sleeve.
The most amazing thing about this fusion is that no one thought of it before. Techno, with its basic melodies, repetitive structure and its easy accessibility to anyone with a cheap keyboard, is modern folk, a cyber-age equivalent of cowboy music. Maybe it just took a novelty band to make it obvious. Or maybe, if you think about it, Rednex isn't such a novelty after all.
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