David Ferguson

★★★

Nashville No More FAT POSSUM. CD/DL/LP

Nashville producer makes debut album just shy of 60th birthday. Known simply as ‘Fergie’ around his Nashville hometown, David Ferguson is the engineer, producer, songwriter and studio owner (sometimes all four) behind some of the city’s greatest recordings. From legends Johnny Cash and John Prine to relative newcomers Margo Price, Sturgill Simpson and Jake Bugg, he’s worked with more names than you’ve had hot grits. Possessed of a producer’s voice – heartwarming, but limited rather than scorching – Fergie bounds enthusiastically through 10 covers by the likes of Lee Hazlewood, Gordon Lightfoot, Guy Clark, and Ian Tyson’s oft-covered Four Strong Winds. The jewel, and the song he takes most care with, is Pat McLaughlin’s all-but-titular Knocking Around Nashville, a ballad of lost love that, in Fergie’s hands, becomes a lament for the days before Nashville’s famed Music Row became little more than a theme park of bars and gift shops.