Jack Ingram - Live Wherever You Are (2005)

Jack Ingram's Live Wherever You Are is a strange little album. It is live for the most part, though its title track was recorded in the studio, and "Never Knocked Me Down," comes from a CMT Outlawsbroadcast. The rest is taken from various stages and places along the road, and the record sounds like that -- too chopped up. The editing process tried hard to capture the flow of a single gig, but it still comes across as a reflection of its title. There's nothing wrong with this per se, but as it is, Live Wherever You Are feels more like a stopgap between studio albums just to have something on the market. There are some great performances here, such as his read of "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line," and "Goodnight Moon," and some silly ones, too, that appear to be novelty crowd-pleasers like "Happy Happy (Country Country)." Ingram can be a truly electrifying performer, but that has never been captured on his studio recordings. Perhaps he wants to keep those two parts of his vocation separate. But the bottom line is, that when a set is constructed like this one is, so abruptly in feel without normal transitions, something gets lost; and it feels like that here. Some songs really burn, while others feel out of place in line.