Drivin' Sideways - Drivin' Sideways (1997)

What do you get when you cross NASCAR Racing with Lynyrd Skynyrd? You get the music every good ol' Southern boy loves, with subject matter about his favorite sport. Drivin' Sideways create their own unique musical niche, and the fact is, they do it well. Very well. Former Skynyrd guitarist Mike Estes handles lead vocals and guitar, along with Randy Peak on guitar, Bird on bass and Jim Jenness on drums. The boys even pull in former Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Ed King to jam. Songs like "What Else Would I Do On Sunday?" and "The Iceman" rock with real Southern flair, and "Asphalt Angels" is a Skynyrdesque ballad that remembers the drivers who were killed while racing.
"The Intimidator" and "That's Just Racin'" rock, and "Racetrack Romance" is a distinctly country-rock number, with shades of Hank Williams, Jr. flooding in like a red spotlight piercing a smoke filled auditorium. "Boy Wonder" is a ballad about Jeff Gordon, and "Yellow Flag Blues" is perhaps the first blues song to be written about NASCAR. Shades of Billy Gibbons. Haw, haw, haw. Closing out the set is "The Ballad of Junior Johnson," a one-hundred-percent Southern rocker, featuring Ed King on lead guitar, the highlight of the disc. Hey, it's about a moonshine runner who became a winning race driver. This is the stuff Southern folk heroes are made of friends and neighbors.~Michael B. Smith