HIGH TIDES AND DEEP TRACKS
Ten of the best: an essential Outlaws playlist.
THERE GOES ANOTHER LOVE SONG
From Outlaws, 1974
The opening song from the Outlaws’ debut album wasted little time in becoming the band’s first US Top 40 single. There Goes Another Love Song set the template for what would follow: a delicious summer melody, unpretentious blue-collar lyrics and lashings of deft guitar picking.
KNOXVILLE GIRL
From The Outlaws, 1974
With its deceptively frail romantic intro, Henry Paul delivered a country-flavoured ode to the one that got away: ‘Go down, go down Knoxville girl/Cos I know you’ll never be my bride.’ Just try resisting those chick-scratch geetars – you’ll never do it.
STICK AROUND FOR ROCK ‘N’ ROLL
From Lady In Waiting, 1976
From their second album, this future live favourite was Hughie Thomasson’s baby. He wrote and sang it, and also took the lead with a delicious guitar solo. No wonder Skynyrd came a-knockin’ when the Outlaws ran out of steam in the 90s.
FREEBORN MAN
From Lady In Waiting, 1976
Originally recorded by Paul Revere & The Raiders, among others, Freeborn Man was perfectly suited to the shuffle-friendly groove of the Outlaws, allowing their famous Florida Guitar Army the space to show how much they could really swing.
HURRY SUNDOWN
From Hurry Sundown, 1977
The title track of their third album ranks highly among the band’s signature anthems. An exquisite production from Bill Szymczyk should have made them stars, but Henry Paul’s departure threw a spanner into the works.
GUNSMOKE
From Hurry Sundown, 1977
Where would any southern rock band be without its song about gun smoke? Paul, its co-writer, would later admit that behind the more obvious aspects of the song’s symbolism, its lyrics were also about ‘A life
shot full of holes’ – his own.
GREEN GRASS AND HIGH TIDES (LIVE)
From Bring It Back Alive, 1978
This one was the band’s very own equivalent of Free Bird, Whipping Post or Highway Song. When they played it live, a couple of verses of singing and a sizzling triple-guitar workout could last 20 minutes or more, as witnessed on their double live album Bring It Back Alive.
(GHOST RIDERS) IN THE SKY
From Ghost Riders, 1980
Given that this western standard (written in 1948 by Stan Jones) had already been covered by Elvis, Johnny Cash, Dick Dale, and many more, the Outlaws displayed balls of steel in recording their own version. Its frantic guitar meltdown conclusion has to be heard to be believed.
IT’S ABOUT PRIDE
From It’s About Pride, 2012
Four years in the making, the group’s first studio album in almost two decades restored dignity to the Outlaws name. As the lyrics, strewn with names of venues and bands of the past, insist: ‘It’s about who we are/It’s knowing where we’ve been and how we’ve come so far’.
SOUTHERN ROCK WILL NEVER DIE
From Dixie Highway, 2020
With its touching references to surviving stalwarts and those who fell along the
highway, Southern Rock
Will Never Die deserves to be acknowledged as a new national anthem to the genre that the 2020 version of the Outlaws hold so close to their hearts.