NME (Magazine) (7/15/95, p.49) - 5 (out of 10) - "...excellent honky tonk stylings that recall the swing and the heartache of Merle Haggard at his best. There's cheating and drinking akimbo, and Dale writes a smart tune..."
Personnel: Dale Watson, Dave Biller (acoustic & electric guitars); Robert Lily (acoustic guitar); Jerry Donahue (electric guitar); Jimmy Day, Scott Walls, Marty Rifkin (steel guitar); Gene Elders (fiddle); Ted Roddy (harmonica); Floyd Domino (piano, Wurlitzer piano); Craig Pettigrew (acoustic bass); Merel Bregante, Dave Sanger (drums); John Ludwick (background vocals).
Recorded at Congress House Studio, Austin, Texas.
Dale Watson may have drawn his first breath and wailed his first note in Alabama, but the singer/guitarist grew up near Houston. Along with a spiritual hotline to Bakersfield, he's powered by the soul of a true-blue Lone Star-stater. Watson's self-penned tunes are so steeped in County & Western's "Golden Age" of the '50s and '60s that virtually the only hints that he's even listened to any more recent music are found in the disparaging references to the decay of the genre dropped throughout his authentic honky-tonk weepers and 'kickers.
On CHEATIN' HEART ATTACK, his long-play recording debut, Watson decries the rampant "rockification"/urbanization of Music City with the sardonic "Nashville Rash" ("I'm too country now fer country, just like Johnny Cash"), the first in what would prove to be a continuing series of passionate attacks. All of the cuts are honestly in-the-tradition (there ain't no tongue-in-cheek send-ups here), and this sturdy set is a terrific introduction to a heavy duty standard-bearer for real, "hard" country music.