Dan Lepien: The Honky Tonk Traditional by Dan Lepien
'Dan Lepien: The Honky Tonk Traditional' by Dan Lepien
It doesn't happen often, but a country musician from Wisconsin can make it big. Sauk City-raised, Palmyra-residing Dan Lepien is primed to be next. The Honky Tonk Traditional is his grand statement of purpose after a half-decade of singles, EPs and a road warrior’s worth ethic of gigging. The album's title befits the classicist approach to the music Lepien loves, with special affection or what's arguably country's last generally classic period, the ‘90s.
His uncannily deep drawl (for a Wisconsinite) rides the deep twang of the pedal steel guitar and sawing fiddle he employs through most of Traditional's 10 selections. He’s not reinventing any wheels lyrically. But his embrace of country's comforting, and generically necessary cliches, allows Lepien to add his own wrinkles to templates used by everyone from Merle Haggard and Garth Brooks (the latter of whom Lepien can resemble vocally when he hits a note just so). Effective as he is an up-tempo, boot scooting mode, Lepien's talent as a writer shines brightest when he slows things down and pares back his instrumentation for some inspired melancholy.
Much of Lepien's pre-album output could have been cobbled together to comprise an impressive long player. In making the effort to draw his full-length debut from whole cloth, however, her has set the stage for even better things to come.
