Rand Reynolds: Buy Cd's

20 tracks/Runtime ~101 minutes, plus additional CD-R of lyrics and artwork

Indiana's uncompromising singer/songwriter Rand Reynolds has hurled his Hillbilly Noir format furiously forward with yet another cd that is successfully ambitious in its scope, and may well be an aesthetic watermark for this new and, obviously, driven artist. Patient Master, with its underlying menace and desolate overtones, is frightening, revelatory, and is clearly carved from Reynolds' own clear visions and startling observations. 11.09.07

CDBABY review/
author: William E Handy Jr:
Rand Reynolds seems intent on keeping his side of the street clean and clearing away the wreckage of his past. This is a man who is not afraid to admit what he did wrong, and then make public gut-wrenching amends through his music. You will hear brutal honesty similar to Johnny Cash’s pleadings near the end of his life. Every song that Rand Reynolds records seems to be an invitation to witness a past disaster or share in a future hope in Rand’s life. Sometimes I feel like he’s making a deep confession and it’s me listening behind the screen. Other times I feel he is asking me to watch his back and bolster his courage.
His guitar playing is unrestrained with emotional timing shifts, changes in intensity and muscular bending of notes. His playing is in honest partnership with his vocal skills… You will experience firsthand the raw emotion that Rand Reynolds is so bravely putting down. Rand has already produced an impressive body of work. After becoming familiar with all of it, I am amazed at the consistent brutal honesty and high emotional content.

This particular collection of hillbilly noir is primarily minimalist songs trimmed down to the bone with tight well-timed boomer acoustic guitar rhythms. Reynolds' material accents an underlying darkness with a stark twang. Not only is AmericanX groundbreaking in style and character, but the songs are, quite simply -- kick ass.

With his 4th cd of Modern Hillbilly music, Rand Reynolds continues his journey to connect the heart to the head. This guitarist’s lightning maturity and sophistication as a songwriter strengthens with Scorched Earth as his baritone delivery introduces new emotional elements that are convincing and contagious. His signature sound is patently potent -- acoustic guitars rumble about in ominously barren musical arrangements that, on the surface, are simplistic in origin, but with an underlying level of complexity masked by the songs’ straightforward melodies. Reynolds’ style is not a manufactured sound, to be sure; his harsh sparse tone is readily recognizable and as close to the listener as this man’s own DNA. He records as if he’s playing to a crowd of one in a perpetual wringing out of a dusty tired heart. At times, this material is unsettling, even horrific perhaps, but ultimately uplifting and cleansing despite a dirge-like morose undercurrent. This is a formidable weighty collection of 18 songs, a portfolio almost, of edgy well-conceived works. Reynolds' lyrics are meditative -- not in a fashionable New Age sense -- but rather, short stories about how human beings assemble their own personality puzzles. For listeners, it's a voyeuristic spiritual romance from a provoking artist who's just begun to share the songs he thought he could never sing. Scorched Earth is not country, exactly, not folk, not rock, but all these things, and promises to be a prelude to Reynolds' own defining moment in Americana music.

Indiana guitarist/songwriter Rand Reynolds' continues familiar themes in his new cd, "Midwestern Hayride" -- bad love, unfaithfulness, death, murder, technology gone awry -- but these new tunes shake the speakers with a clever skillful mix of acoustic music, 1960's rockabilly and modern country pop/rock. Raw, powerful, and yes, crude, at times, but above all, extremely effective. For the sake of all that was once good about original country music, we all hope Reynolds never stops pounding on that old Martin.

Deliciously dark, inventive, hardcore country roots underground music that's destined to raise the bar for the future of alternative country. Rand Reynolds creates a unique collection of lyrical tunes that probe the frailties of the human condition, celebrating those second chances in life that make things right again -- or not. Country roots with a rocker bite, Reynolds delivers inventive power acoustic music guaranteed to stick in the brain and gnaw away. Edgier and more pushy than mainstream alternative country artists, Reynolds relies on sweeping guitar strokes and solid punchy rhythms to skillfully weave a refreshing blend of alternative country music into what he calls "Modern Hillbilly." (It's also the title of his first cd on RescueDisk.) Make no mistake, this guy has done his homework. Powerful stuff.

Where it all began ...