Dukes Hardcore Honeys

Over the past 27 years Steve Earle's music has journeyed all across the Americana spectrum: country, rock, folk, Beatlesque psychedelia, topical folk songs, etc. He's even done a covers record of Townes Van Zandt songs to pay tribute to his late mentor and friend. His very best offerings are those he's recorded with his Twang Trust production partner, Ray Kennedy. They're together here. Over 12 songs, Earle does what he does best: he tells stories that get under the skin and into the bones…

In the late '60s, when such things mattered, Ted Nugent was quickly gaining a reputation as a young-gun guitar hotshot, largely based on the back-to-back success of two singles issued by his group, the Amboy Dukes. The first, "Baby Please Don't Go," was a hopped-up rendition of the old blues standard, which Nugent and the band had learned off the version by Van Morrison's group, Them. The second was a group original, "Journey to the Center of the Mind," one of those tunes that shows up regularly on TV record ads for "Psychedelic Groovy '60s" collections. Nugent and the group continued to make great, musically interesting albums for the tiny Mainstream label, but had no more hits.

The most prominent feature of Migration (the Amboy Dukes' third recording, originally released on Mainstream records) is the lack of a spaced-out follow-up to the group's biggest hit, "Journey to the Center of Your Mind." Perhaps "terrible" Ted Nugent was starting to win the drug war that was beginning to wage within the band, a war that would ultimately claim more than a few key lineup casualties…