Consumer Guide Album

Nanci Griffith: Lone Star State of Minid [MCA, 1987]
Band's the same, and there's not a whole hell of a lot of distance between Jim Rooney, a marketwise old folk pro, and Tony Brown, a principled neo country pro. Yet Brown's production provides the soupcon of schlock that turns the raucous "Ford Econoline" into a landmark of country feminism as well as saving "Trouble in the Fields," about noble victims selling the new John Deere to till their family farm with their own sweat and sinew. Too often, though, she's still a folkie playing just folks. B