Cimarron 615

Same Sky

Blue Elan

 Following the 2021 death of singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Rusty Young, a founding member of the country-rock pioneer band Poco, Kirk Pasich, the head of Blue Elan Records, assembled My Friend: A Tribute to Rusty Young. Young’s bandmates and fellow harmony singers in the final edition of Poco, bassist Jack Sundrud, guitarist Tom Hampton, keyboardist Michael Webb, and drummer Rick Lonow, along with guitarist Bill Lloyd, backed all the artists paying respects on the album. They also contributed five songs as Cimarron 615, their name tying the title of Young’s 1976 Poco hit “Rose of Cimarron” to the area code of their Nashville base. The Cimarron 615 songs stood out so much that the band forged ahead with Brand New Distance, a debut album of inspired creativity. Lloyd had departed before the release of a second, equally fine self-titled album, and guitarist, singer, and songwriter Ronnie Guilbeau (son of Gib Guilbeau of Flying Burrito Brothers fame) had replaced Hampton on it.

Now, the seasoned quartet releases its third album, Same Sky, and it proves to be transcendent. The ten songs, written by Sundrud, Webb, and Guilbeau with assorted writing partners, plus one by longtime collaborator, Tim Krekel, and another by Guilbeau’s father, Gib, all burst with constantly changing flavors by way of expert, handmade music and stunning, three and four-part harmony singing. Two of the songs channel Poco directly, and superbly. Webb’s mountain country-styled “Kentucky Calling” recalls the earliest version of Poco while Sundrud’s lush “Intention of Your Touch,” a love song supreme, could nestle in with anything on Poco’s 1978 breakthrough album, Legend. Otherwise, glints of Poco sparkle, as do echoes of bands that Poco had a profound influence on, most notably the Eagles (Sundrud certainly calls to mind Don Henley’s dusty tenor). However, taken as a whole, Same Sky’s cohesive song cycle offers just as much striking ingenuity as it does veneration.

The album’s title points to the fact that we’re all walking around on a ball in the same space. Poco always operated with optimism, faith, and innocent escape, and those qualities permeate these songs. In the collaborative opener “Your Turn Now,” life gets ridden full bore with confidence. Lovely acoustic guitar and piping harmonica open “Comet in the Sky,” Webb’s eulogy to Young. The song’s galloping beat, oblique lyrics, and Rusty Young-inspired pedal steel playing by guest Mike Daly all conspire to make it irresistible. But irresistible is a theme here. The rockabilly charged “Praying to St. Rita”—she’s the Patroness of Impossible Causes—has roots in a Dodgers game, its humor played out in craftily written lyrics sung over kinetic rhythms. “Aruba” then arrives on a celebratory Caribbean wave, the weed smoke practically palpable through the speakers. Weaving that intoxicating reggae/ska-driven depiction of a lost night of inebriation seamlessly into this set proves that Cimarron 615 possesses far-reaching capabilities to entertain.

Krekel’s “California,” steamy, nostalgic, and jam-band-like by its elegant piano and boiling guitar excursions, and Sundrud’s cynical, herky-jerky, blues-rocking “World Slidin’ Down,” bring the album to its conclusion with opposing mindsets, one as persuasive as the other.

In the end, Cimarron 615 preserves and enhances pure, rich Americana music on Same Sky. As Poco proclaimed in another of its early hits, the band provides one radiant “good feeling to know” after another.

Tom Clarke for MAS

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