Personnel includes: Trace Adkins (vocals, guitar); Biff Watson, Michael Spriggs (acoustic guitar); Dan Huff, Brent Mason, Pat Buchanan (electric guitar); Paul Franklin (steel guitar); Jonathan Yudkin (violin, cello, mandocello); Larry Franklin, Aubrey Haynie (fiddle); Tony Harrell (piano); John Hobbs (keyboards); Mike Brignardello (bass); Chris McHugh, Greg Morrow (drums); Eric Darken (percussion); Russell Terrell, Wes Hightower, Curtis Wright (background vocals).
Recorded at Emerald Entertainment, The Tracking Room, and Sound Shop Studios, Nashville, Tennessee; The Sound Kitchen, Franklin, Tennessee.
He may sport a cowboy hat and operate out of Nashville, but the brand of country Trace Adkins plays owes little to tradition. Bolstered by a semi-hip-hop beat, the title tune "Chrome" is about as close as one might comfortably like to get to country rap. The wrecked-romance ballad "Help Me Understand" owes more to the radio-friendly ballads of the Eagles than to any cowpoke lament of old. "Thankful Man," despite its blue-collar lyric about honest workin' folks, is shot through with driving rock guitar and accentuated by staccato bursts of synthesizer. The bluesy-guitar-and-drum-loops combo that opens up "Scream" could have come straight off a Beck album. Despite all this modernity, Adkins's deep voice is full of down-home twang and there's plenty of steel guitar and fiddle framing his heartland vocals. Accordingly, CHROME strikes a hitbound balance between yesterday and today.
