The Home Rangers are just about everything you could want in a cowboy band. While incorporating a number of styles, the quartet still manages to keep one boot firmly planted in traditional and nearly-traditional music of the saddle.
First, all four band members clearly have a love and reverence for this music. You just know from listening that these are men who cried when Roy Rogers passed on and who do a pretty good Gabby Hayes impression at parties. I bet they really do hum "Blue Prairie" to themselves when they ride their old paints on evenings and weekends.
Almost as important, this is a group with a sense of humor. That doen't mean that they're always funny -- anyone who has listened to guitarist Stan Greer tell jokes while a band mate fixes a broken string knows that. Instead, these are good-humored, easygoing guys who don't take themselves too seriously. The fact that their word play is sometimes very witty adds to this. So does the inclusion of fun songs such as When Our Old Age Pension Check Comes to Our Door, which is dedicated to Newt Gingrich, and Glue in the Saddle, on which Greer is a riot.
They can play, too. Though virtuosity isn't the focus of the group, there isn't a sloppy musician among the four. The standout player is David Hawkins, who plays a somber solo guitar version of Streets of Laredo, then turns around and burns up a mandolin on Back in the Saddle Again. He is at his best playing three layered parts on Whoopi Ti Yi Yo, and he gets credit for adapting the William Tell Overture for the Rangers. (For this, he's dubbed "The Lone Arranger.") Richard Crowson has a great voice and is no slouch as a banjo and dobro player either. Greer and bass player Orin Friesen are solid behind them.
Finally, these are the best-connected cowboys you'll ever hear. Of course, Crowson and Friesen are well-known from their work at a certain Wichita newspaper and a certain bluegrass radio show anyway. But on this CD, they manage to get help from Charlie Daniels, Red Steagall, Rex Allen Jr., Johnny "Mr. Paladin" Western and, believe it or not, Riders in the Sky. For a cowboy music fan, it doesn't get any better than that.