Matt Masters - Everybody Loves a Winner (2021)

On March 23, Masters turns 45 and will release Everybody Loves a Winner, his first record in 10 years. But unlike his past albums, this one is a collection of cover songs recorded in Lethbridge with Leeroy Stagger and several musicians that he joins on a western tour each year as part of Barney Bentall’s all-star Caribou Express.

Covers include Kris Kristofferson’s For the Good Times, Ian Tyson’s Someday Soon, Stephin Merritt’s hipster weeper Papa Was a Rodeo, Willie Nelson’s Funny How Time Slips Away and even a reverent duet with Bentall on the wistful, on-the-trail cowboy ballad My Rifle My Pony and Me. With this sort of song list, it might seem as if Masters was aiming for vibes similar to those found during the raucous honky-tonk happy hours he hosted late Friday afternoons at the King Eddy before COVID shut them down. But Everybody Loves a Winner is actually an entertaining hybrid that owes just as much to Memphis soul as it does honky-tonk twang. It offers Masters a chance to show off his impressive bonafides as a soulful interpreter. His takes on Joe South’s Walk a Mile In My Shoes and Nelson’s Funny How Time Slips Away recall 1970s AM-radio glory thanks to his rich, swaggering baritone. Tyson’s Someday Soon gets a smooth overhaul with vocal help from Vancouver vocalist Jill Barber and some well-placed blasts from the East Van Horns atop Hammond organ and pedal-steel flourishes. Masters’ version of the title track owes more to the soulful 1967 original belted out by William Bell than Linda Ronstadt’s twangy 1973 cover.