January 15, 1999
Beaver Nelson—The Last Hurrah
Dan Ferguson, Timeout (Wakefield, RI)

As a 19-year old songwriting wunderkind just a scant eight years ago, Beaver Nelson was tagged as Austin, Texas' next big thing. During that time, there were two major label deals, first with Columbia and then with an Epic Records subsidiary captained by none other than James Cameron of Titanic motion picture fame, and one with a small Los Angeles indie that went broke before Nelson could get down to business. In all, it added up to three near deals with squat to show for it. Nelson would enter an Austin studio in the fall of '97 and lay down a number of acoustic tracks.

The resulting material would catch the ear of Austin indie Freedom Records, so much so that a couple of months later, Nelson was back in the studio with some of Austin's finest from the roots and alt country side (Scrappy Jud Newcomb, Champ Hood, George Reiff, Mark Patterson, Rich Brotherton) adding some instrumental muscle to his songs. Listening to the end product entitiled The Last Hurrah, Nelson's songwriting chops tell these ears that all that fuss early on was deserving. A fan of Townes Van Zandt, Nelson wrote the bulk of The Last Hurrah material after attending Van Zandt's funeral. From the ultra-clever Stones-ian rocker Stray Dog to the slacker bent of Forget Thinkin to the heart-on-the-sleeve purity of I'm Just Cryin, there's a definite Townes feeling running its way through a whole bunch of The Last Hurrah dozen. The only difference is old Townes never rocked this hard. Last year, Freedom gave us an unheralded gem of an album from ex-True Believers Jon Dee Graham. This year's model is Beaver Nelson. Highly recommended.