The
Big & Rich
camp decreed that 2009 was the year of solo projects, with
John Rich
taking the spring for
Son of a Preacher Man
and
Big Kenny
getting the fall for
The Quiet Times of a Rock and Roll Farmboy
, his first album since
Live a Little
. If that record -- recorded in 1999 but not released until 2005, after
turned into stars -- veered toward big-budget studio rock,
The Quiet Times
does have a stronger country bent, containing lots of fiddles and guitars, even odes to being back down home. Despite all of this,
doesn't feel particularly country: like
, it exists in a curious, willfully eclectic space between genres. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine