Southern Drive

Q: When is a country record not merely a country record? A: When the record in question swaggers more than it swoons, or when the album makes your eyes sting with sweat, rather than filling them with tears.

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More About

• Macon (Georgia)
• Dallas (Texas)
• Donnie Rex Martin
• Kevin Garinger
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

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While Southern Drive is considered by many to be one of the better country bands in Dallas, the band's latest LP, Sunland Radio, is a Southern rock record that would've fit just as naturally in Allman-era Macon, Georgia, as it absolutely does here in modern-day North Texas.

To augment Donnie Rex Martin's oak barrel-aged vocals, Southern Drive has significantly stepped up its game musically. The album possesses a veritable Crock-Pot of Southern-fried flourishes with its propulsive train-track rhythms, skin-scorching lead guitar and Kevin Garinger's show-stealing harmonica—his bold notes would soar through any sub-Mason-Dixon humidity with the greatest of ease and authority.

It's a fine release, the result of a band that has grown quite comfortable in its own skin over the course of its three years together. Indeed, Sunland Radio is a more tightly centered offering than Take a Ride, the band's debut album from 2008 that did little to distinguish the act as much more than a capable group of players still waiting to fully gel as an operative unit. Southern Drive does just that on this release.