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Looks Like Rain

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Looks Like Rain
Studio album by
ReleasedSeptember 1969
Recorded1969
StudioCinderella Sound, Nashville, Tennessee
GenreProgressive country
Length37:35
LabelMercury
ProducerBob Beckham and Jerry Kennedy
Mickey Newbury chronology
Harlequin Melodies
(1968)
Looks Like Rain
(1969)
Frisco Mabel Joy
(1971)
Singles from Looks Like Rain
  1. "San Francisco Mabel Joy"
    Released: September 1969
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
Christgau's Record GuideB−[2]

Looks Like Rain is a 1969 concept album by singer-songwriter Mickey Newbury. After recording his debut album with RCA, Newbury was dissatisfied with the resulting album and left RCA to pursue a style closer to his tastes. Recorded at Cinderella Sound, as his next two albums would be, the result is widely considered his first real recording and represents a peak in the singer songwriter movement, especially for Nashville. The sound and style of the record would be highly influential during the Outlaw Movement during country music in the 1970s especially on albums by David Allan Coe and Waylon Jennings. Linking the tracks with delicate arrangements and liberal amount of atmosphere (almost all tracks feature rain sound effects), the record contains some of Newbury's most celebrated compositions including "She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye", "33rd of August", "I Don't Think Much About Her No More", and "San Francisco Mabel Joy". AllMusic's review of the album concludes, "Looks Like Rain is so fine, so mysterious in its pace, dimension, quark strangeness and charm, it defies any attempt at strict categorization or criticism; a rare work of genius."[1]

Looks Like Rain 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 to 1981. In 2011, it was reissued again, both separately and as part of the four-disc Mickey Newbury box set An American Trilogy, alongside two other albums recorded at Cinderella Sound, Frisco Mabel Joy and Heaven Help the Child. This release marks the first time that Looks Like Rain has been released on CD in remastered form, after the original master tapes (long thought to have been destroyed in a fire) were rediscovered in 2010.

Track listing

[edit]

All tracks composed by Mickey Newbury; except where indicated

  1. "Write a Song a Song/Angeline"
  2. "She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye" (Mickey Newbury, Doug Gilmore)
  3. "I Don't Think Much About Her No More"
  4. "T. Total Tommy"
  5. "33rd of August/When the Baby in My Lady Gets the Blues"
  6. "San Francisco Mabel Joy"
  7. "Looks Like Baby's Gone"

Personnel

[edit]
  • Mickey Newbury - vocals, guitar
  • Charlie McCoy – harmonica, guitar, bass pedals
  • Wayne Moss – guitar, engineer
  • Jerry Kennedy – guitar, sitar
  • Farrell Morris – percussion
  • Charlie Tallent - engineer

Selected cover recordings

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b Jurek, Thom. "It Looks Like Rain – Mickey Newbury". AllMusic. Retrieved October 28, 2019.
  2. ^ Christgau, Robert (1981). "Consumer Guide '70s: N". Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies. Ticknor & Fields. ISBN 089919026X. Retrieved March 8, 2019 – via robertchristgau.com.