Americans really appreciate live music and are more open about whether they like you. Brits are too subdued. When Moke arrives stateside, like Ian Brown, you'll be a fan too. They were all No. 1 country hits, they all had stories you could visualize and hooks you could hum, and they were all cowritten by Matraca Berg. It might be the hint of intelligence in her big, confident soprano, the suggestion that she knows more than she's letting on.
Country radio hates that.
Critics and fellow musicians, on the other hand, love it and have been huge Berg fans for years. The new disc doesn't include any of the singles she's written for other artists, though a few have been album cuts for Yearwood, Suzy Bogguss, Pam Tillis, and Linda Ronstadt. Snap this one up before it, too, goes out of print.