Since 1992, Toni Price’s musical realm has been anchored by a happy-hour gig she plays every Tuesday evening at the Continental Club in her home of Austin. Accompanied by some of that city’s finest players — for the past couple years guitarists Jud Newcomb and Casper Rawls plus fiddler Champ Hood — Price holds forth in front of an always-packed house, the musicians seated in chairs but nevertheless stirring up a soulful and energetic experience. The instruments may be acoustic, but air is full of electricity.
The surprise, then, about Price’s first live album is that she chose not to record it at the Continental, forgoing her home turf for a club called Railroad Blues in the small West Texas town of Alpine (pop. 5,637). Upon further consideration, it’s a good call: As central as the Continental gig is to Price’s identity, her shows there are almost too predictable anymore, with a call-and-response between audience and band on many songs set in stone to the point of ritual. Furthermore, even though this is a live album, it’s not a greatest-hits package: This is all-new material, and, as such, deserved a setting that focused more on the songs than the surroundings.
The calmer quarters of Railroad Blues prove a fine choice for such a project, even lending a special ambience to the disc via opening and closing tracks that consist of nothing but noise from trains on the tracks that run right by the club. In between, Price proves once again that she’s one of the finest female singers of her day, possessor of a voice so rich in melody and personality that the fact she doesn’t write her own songs ceases to be an issue. She makes them her own.
Besides, even though she doesn’t write, there’s a definite consistency to her catalog, thanks to Gwil Owen, an old pal from Price’s hometown of Nashville who penned about half the songs she recorded on her first two discs. That relationship continues on Sol Power: After the opening seconds of train sounds and a beautiful showcase for Hood on Richard De La Vega’s “The Old Fiddler’s Waltz”, Price reels off five Owen tunes in a row, then tackles two others later on the disc. And while there’s nothing here as drop-dead beautiful as “I Doubt If It Does To You” from Swim Away or “Something” from Hey, it’s all strong enough to have warranted recording, and continues to build a case for Owen being one of the most talented (if underrated) songwriters in Nashville. Perhaps more notable is the presence of three songs co-written by Herb McCullough, who had one tune on Price’s last album. “Sarah” (written with David Schnaufer and long a staple of Price’s live set) rivals Owen’s “Tumbleweed” from Hey for its sheer hummable infectiousness.
Price’s general reluctance to tour likely has precluded her from attaining the widespread recognition her voice and presence deserve, but her records continue to document that little slice of Texas heaven taking place down in Austin. (Or, in this case, Alpine.)
