Some records slink off to minor legend status quietly and even mysteriously. That’s pretty much the case with the Star Room Boys’ Why Do Lonely Men And Women Want To Break Each Other’s Hearts?, a timeless mix of hard-country twang, cosmic Americana and barroom poetry that caught the ears of more recognizable names like Patterson Hood and Lydia Loveless. Almost three decades later, the Star Room Boys’ 1999 debut holds up remarkably well—and it’s finally getting the reissue it deserves via Strolling Bones.
The title track is a classic C&W heartbreaker elevated by the effortless interplay between singer/songwriter Dave Marr, guitarist Philip McArdle, pedal-steel ace John Neff, bassist John McMahon and drummer Bob Fernandez. Recorded mostly live at David Barbe’s Chase Park Transduction Studios, the performance captures a band discovering just how far its music could travel once everyone was pointed in the same direction.
“It’s one of those songs where what the band does with the arrangement really makes it,” says Marr. “They’re just swinging so hard and absolutely nailing all those little stops and spaces.”
The Star Room Boys’ late-’90s ground zero was a rehearsal space above a screen-printing shop in downtown Athens, where they spent inordinate amounts of time dissecting Merle Haggard, Buck Owens and Lefty Frizzell tunes. They co-opted that vintage melancholy, humor and grit for their originals, and “Why Do Lonely Men And Women” leans heavily on that first attribute.
“I wanted to come up with a title that sounded like a really obscure, super-specific proverb or axiom—like (Kitty Wells’) ‘It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels’ or (Ernest Tubbs’) ‘Don’t Trade Your Old-Fashioned Sweetheart (For A Honky Tonk Queen),’” says Marr. “Instead, it ended up being a rhetorical question that’s about as general as can be and has no answer. But it still has the kind of resonance I was looking for.”
Set for release on September 25, Why Do Lonely Men And Women Want To Break Each Other’s Hearts? will be issued for the first time on vinyl as a deluxe double LP. The band will also play reunion shows in Atlanta and Athens at the end of the month. In the meantime, we’re proud to premiere the title track.
—Hobart Rowland
See the Star Room Boys live.
