Track Listing

1. Suitcase in my Hand
2. Cat and Mouse
3. Strike!
4. J. Edgar
5. Footprints in the Snow
6. Sundown Town
7. Green Dog
8. The Dying Truck Driver
9. Christmas in Southgate
10. Hank Williams
11. Red Cat Till I Die
12. Three Chords and the Truth
13. My Name is Buddy
14. One Cat, One Vote, One Beer
15. Cardboard Avenue
16. Farm Girl
17. There's a Bright Side Somewhere

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10000 in Music
• Released on: 2007-03-06
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
On My Name Is Buddy, Ry Cooder revisits, in a new set of original material, the sound and feeling of the "dust bowl songs" he first explored more than three decades ago on such groundbreaking albums as his self-titled 1970 debut and 1971's In The Purple Valley. In fact, he's joined by old friends like pianist Van Dyke Parks and drummer Jim Keltner who were with him at the start of his extraordinary, ultimately globe-spanning musical odyssey, which has yielded him six Grammy Awards to date, several more nominations, and perennial acclaim. My Name Is Buddy is also a journey, a phantasmagorical rendering in music, words and pictures of the travels of three unlikely cohorts - Buddy Red Cat, Lefty Mouse and Reverend Tom Toad - as they meander through the west "in the days of labor, big bosses, farm failures, strikes, company cops, sundown towns, hobos and trains...the America of yesteryear." For this allegorical tale, Cooder marshals all his remarkable skills as a producer, arranger, songwriter, soundtrack composer and musicologist. (The Christian Science Monitor recently dubbed him "a modern-day Alan Lomax.") My Name Is Buddy recalls Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory - that is, if it had been enacted by the articulate animal characters of Walt Kelly's classic comic Pogo. Cooder conjures up the dark shadows of an earlier time to wryly comment on the political and social issues of the present. As back-story to his songs, Cooder has written short stories for each one and they're accompanied by evocative illustrations from noted San Antonio-based painter and muralist Vincent Valdez, all of which are included in a specially designed package.

Amazon.com
Though this release carries the deceptive subtitle Another Record by Ry Cooder, the virtuosic guitarist and ethnomusicological adventurer has never released another album quite like this. And neither has anyone else. After brilliant side trips into the music of pre-Castro Cuba and pre-baseball Chavez Ravine, Cooder returns to the Depression-era and Dust Bowl ballads that marked his earliest solo releases of the 1970s. Yet most of this material is original, offering a populist parable of three fellow travelers: Buddy Red Cat, Lefty Mouse, and the Reverend Tom Toad. The tradition of putting pointed social commentary in the mouths of animals extends from Animal Farm to Pogo, and Buddy seems like a feline cross between Woody Guthrie and Joe Hill--a troubadour of union solidarity, interspecies brotherhood, and radical populism. Though Cooder's cartoon vocals occasionally sound a little mannered, the music throughout ranks with his best, as he reunites with conjunto accordion master Flaco Jimenez and soul singers Terry Evans and Bobby King, enlists banjo brothers Pete and Mike Seeger, and receives inspired support from the Chieftains' Paddy Moloney, pianist Van Dyke Parks, and drummers Jim Keltner and (his son) Joachim Cooder. Whether he's channeling his inner Chet Baker on "Green Dog" or closing with the utopian vision of "There's a Bright Side Somewhere," Cooder shows more sides of his multifaceted music than he has on any previous release. --Don McLeese

Customer Reviews

into the purple valley redux
ry's best in along time. great story line wonderfull tunes. shows he's the master of modern american roots-folk.

Worst CD I bought in 5 years
I preordered this CD. I just listen to it for the second time. This is satire at it's most boring. Don't bother with this CD. Ry has done much more interesting stuff, both lyrically and musically. Listen to the samples before you buy. I wish I did. If you like what you hear ignore this and go with your own tastes but for me "yuck!"

A Bizarre Concept Album About A Cat
This new album might be strange to some, while others may hail it as an instant classic. I'm sort of torn between both emotions, primarily due to the subject matter (which is interesting the first five tracks, but then gets old very quickly). Still, for lovers of folk-rock with an unusual twist, this was perhaps one of the more 'out-there' releases in 2007.

From the cover shot of "Buddy the Cat", it would hard to imagine that the entire album is actually about this one cat. But you read that right. You have a cat, and his best friend, the mouse. Together with a 'Reverend', they travel the length and breadth of America. Whether this is a literal or metaphorical journey is never revealed, but we are given some truly unique insights into animal politics, the state of the world, and indeed America as a nation and a breathing soul.

This album strongly reminded me of my most favorite album of all time - "Scarlet's Walk" by Tori Amos. On that album, Amos took a cross country trip and each state was awarded a song based on the lead characters' experiences there. This album is VERY similar to that, but instead of a human, its a cat and mouse that are discovering what life and the nation is all about.

However, the lyrics and songwriting here are so clever, that you can juxtapose 'everyman' wherever the cat is mentioned, and come up with a reasonably spiritual, philosophically entertaining explanation for the entire album. I found this extremely vital to the CD, and can't think of any album than "Scarlet's Walk" to compare it to. Yes, the genre here is the dusty, early Americana acoustic folk-rock that Tori Amos could not possibly emulate, but the spirit is the same.

A fantastic slice of post-modern, early-Depression-evocating brilliance, all told through the eyes of that most remarkable mammal (after the dog) - the cat. Unique, and quite visionary, I think.

Four Solid Stars.