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Album review: Montgomery Gentry

By Walter Tunis Contributing Music Critic

Montgomery Gentry

Back When I Knew It All

There were signs on their 2006 album, Some People Change, that hometown country heroes Eddie Montgomery and Troy Gentry might be settling down. A little. Not so on Back When I Knew It All.

The very Byrds-like title tune hints at life that outlasted a youth run on ”beer and gasoline half a lap ahead of the law,“ but much of the album is fueled by higher-octane stuff that is vastly less apologetic. The party starts not in a roadhouse but in a foot-stomping mountainside church service with a taste for snake-handling and a preacher on the verge of spontaneous combustion. ”He ain't sure and we ain't sure exactly what he said,“ sings Gentry over screams of slide guitar on The Revival. ”So praise the Lord and pass me a copperhead.“ Can't wait to see the video for that one. Similarly raucous but vastly less frightful is I Pick My Parties, a middle-age manual for midweek revelry sung with Toby Keith (with whom Montgomery Gentry will tour extensively this summer), and One in Every Crowd, which neatly countrifies a David Bowie-Alice Cooper guitar riff as it honors the sort of one-man audience ­annoyance most folks would opt to clobber if given license. In short, Back When I Knew It All is electric business as usual for our Kentucky pals as they return to a rowdier framework while keeping a wary eye on the age factor.