By: Frostie
Date: January 6, 2007
From: http://realcountrymusic.org/cgi/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11466&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=120

#2. Joey Allcorn “Fifty Years Too Late”

Released 10/3/06 on the DJAllcorn label.

Joey is the latest artist to climb aboard the train that Wayne Hancock and Dale Watson fired up ten years ago. That being to train towards unabashed country music. Music that’s steeped in the roots of country music, progressive in it’s thinking, and refuses to bow at the altar of the almighty dollar.

While no other artist to date has taken Watson’s crown as the King of the Haggard/Paycheck/Jones school of Honky-Tonk, Joey Allcorn the 24 year old Columbus, GA native may well have perfected the Wills/Williams/Tubb genre. What sets Allcorn apart most noticeably is his lyrics, which leave no doubt that he understands his music would be better appreciated 50 years ago, but that it’s the only vehicle by which he can express his thoughts about the mysteries of life. His voice has the warm nasally buzz of a wooden cased console tube radio sitting in the front parlor of Grandma’s house. His band does the best imitation of the Drifting Cowboys and the Texas Troubadours on the circuit today. His songs, while generally locked in a two step shuffle with the likes of Tubb and Williams Sr, also often follow the formula that Hank Williams III is so fond of, that being lamentations of the current state of country music and the desire to see things return to the purity of the past. However, Allcorn is more interested in paying respectful homage to the past as opposed to Hank III’s desire to vulgarly put down the present. “In Nashville, TN” is the prime example of this sort of writing; it breaks from Allcorn’s usual style and downright rocks complete with screaming electric guitar and pounding drums.

Allcorn, not unlike J.B. Beverley and Williams III has a background in punk/metal rock. That sentiment comes forward in many of the darker songs on the album. “Graveyard Bound” finds the storyteller waking up dead on a slab at the city morgue, then follows him on his trip to the graveyard and the dirt hitting him in the face. “The Execution” tells the tale of a man on his way to the electric chair, right down to the describing the little girl who h killed, the victim’s family in the front row of the death chamber, and the burning of his flesh and the twitching of his body. In the end we find out that his crime was driving drunk and killing his passenger, who happens to be his only child. That song provides a perfect end to the album, not unlike the slamming of a steel door or the sealing of the gates of hell&ldots;fini.