AMG Review of Folk Heroes

Rick Anderson
All Music Guide

The mid-1990s may go down in history as the high-water mark for irony in America. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing is open to debate, but this hilarious document of the period should find a place in every American home, partly because it's so funny ("Hell Froze Over Today" rhymes "Timothy Leary" and "single-bullet theory"), partly because the politics are refreshingly equal-opportunity (note how "Do the Clinton" is balanced out by "Russian Limbaugh"), and partly because the songs and the singing are so good. If they don't pay attention, aging fans of the Limeliters and the Kingston Trio may find themselves fooled by Roy Zimmerman's long-neck banjo and Doug Whitney's flattop just long enough to be lulled into singing along with lines like "Try appearing Jeffersonian/bring another crony in/everybody do the Clinton" before they know what they're doing. That's assuming, of course, that they haven't already been tipped off by "No Shoes" ("Then I saw a man who had no feet/and I said, 'Friend, can I have your shoes?'"). It's sort of a generational in-joke, but this album is brilliant.