Amy Rigby

The Old Guys SouthErn doMEStic Vocalist’s tributes to men of standing and repute.

There really is no one quite like Amy Rigby. Despite having both a voice and penchant for American melodies that suggests the work of Gillian Welch or Laura Cantrell, Rigby has an edge and force to her work that suggests Beggars Banquet Stones or Bob Dylan at his most Judas-y. Combine that with a penchant for rough-edged production, the occasional presence of husband Eric Goulden on guitar, and a collection of songs which are both wistful and acerbic, and you have The Old Guys.

Like a one-woman garageband Joni Mitchell, Amy Rigby sings about, well, old guys – there’s from philiproth@gmail to rzimmerman@aol.com, which imagines Roth emailing Dylan about the latter’s Nobel-prize conversation (‘When they lay that medal on your wicked heart’); there’s a tribute song called Robert Altman; and there’s The Old Guys itself, a Stonesy eulogy to the old dudes. Ending on the chiming rocker One Off (another tribute song to some other guy), The Old Guys is a kind of tribute album that deserves a kind of tribute album all of its own.