Plug It In And Play by Steve Bedunah

large image coverprintable pdf cover

view larger image

0 faves

fave it

Americana | Power-folk

10 tracks | 37 minutes

Released Feb 2007
on dog trot

Click for a 30-second preview. All tracks are 192kbps high fidelity sound quality. Protected WMA $0.77 or unprotected MP3 $0.88.

listen album 30sec. shuffle buy CD review album promote album

MP3GIFT

sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:45 Down To This River lyrics BUY MP3 03:45 Down To This River lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:45 Down To This River

sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:58 Please Have Her Call Me lyrics BUY MP3 03:58 Please Have Her Call Me lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:58 Please Have Her Call Me

sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:38 Plug It In And Play lyrics BUY MP3 03:38 Plug It In And Play lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:38 Plug It In And Play

sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:01 Little Sister lyrics BUY MP3 03:01 Little Sister lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:01 Little Sister

sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:55 Oak Planks lyrics BUY MP3 03:55 Oak Planks lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:55 Oak Planks

sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:27 Down The Drain lyrics BUY MP3 03:27 Down The Drain lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:27 Down The Drain

sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:32 Albuquerque's A Long, Long Way lyrics BUY MP3 04:32 Albuquerque's A Long, Long Way lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:32 Albuquerque's A Long, Long Way

sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:26 Lady With The Sad Face lyrics BUY MP3 03:26 Lady With The Sad Face lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:26 Lady With The Sad Face

sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:32 Reunion lyrics BUY MP3 03:32 Reunion lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:32 Reunion

sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:19 If You Need To Help lyrics BUY MP3 04:19 If You Need To Help lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:19 If You Need To Help

$7.77 $8.88 $8.88

Backwoods Rock, folk rock with grit and edge and a bit of twang- Songs about the common man that ring true.

Editorial review

The U.S. census of 1890 declared that the once wide-open American frontier was officially closed; there were at least two people per square mile everywhere in the country, from coast to coast. One hundred seventeen years later, in a nation with a population over 300 million, there still remain those who mourn this fact, or, amazingly, haven't yet gotten the news. These are the people Texas singer/songwriter Steve Bedunah concerns himself with. On his first album, Hand Me Down Land, he gave his various characters many reasons for their troubles. On his second, Plug It In and Play, he often seems to be describing variations of the same single character, a sense reinforced by his tendency to set the songs in the first person, and that "I" narrator is a guy who largely makes his own problems. As self-described in the opening number, "Down to This River," the singer is a man who wants to "get away from it all," but not in the sense of going on vacation. Rather, he is a rural, 19th century type who looks with abhorrence at the modern world of credit cards and ATMs. "What's this country coming to?," he asks before raging at all those Internet types, "I want to email them all to go to hell." Contemporary life keeps coming up for ridicule in the songs in references to Wal-Mart and SUVs, but it isn't so much that Bedunah is a Luddite, it's that he sees himself as a sort of updated version of Huckleberry Finn, worried that someone, usually his woman or someone else's woman, is trying to civilize him. In the second song, "Please Have Her Call Me," he tries to explain that he comes by his rugged individualism honestly in the sense that his father was a rambling man, too, but over and over his point is the same, that he (or the character who's singing) wants to be free to drink his whiskey, shoot his guns, play his guitar, and hit the road, but is tied down to a world of responsibility that includes matrimony followed by the risks of alimony and child support. It's an old story, of course, but it is at least somewhat less forbidding than the stories Bedunah told in Hand Me Down Land, and it is told with livelier music, a country-rock sound that recalls Waylon Jennings and even, at times, Lynyrd Skynyrd, supporting the singer's rusty, heavily Texas-accented voice. And, anyway, it may all be a fantasy; in the acknowledgements, Bedunah is lavish in his praise of his wife "for your love, inspiration, patience, and for all your work on this project." (Melissa Bedunah is credited for CD layout and design.) He also thanks his four children "for making everything matter." Guess he must be singing about somebody else in these songs! ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide

Bio / Background

Even from the beginning, songwriter/singer Steve Bedunah received high praise for his work. Robert Oermann, Nashville’s most acclaimed critic, wrote in Music Row about Bedunah’s “The Johnstons” in his first CD Hand Me Down Land, “The first thing that catches your ear is the band laying down a twangin’, thumpin Cash-like groove. The second thing that you notice is that you’re in the presence of a major songwriter. This dark dramatic word portrait will haunt you.”

Brian Owens, in Metronome Magazine, remarked, “It wouldn't be surprising to see Bedunah nominated for Best New Country Act for this outstanding album.” Jim Beal of the San Antonio Express notes that Bedunah is “among the best when it comes to chronicling the clash of urban and rural Texas.”

The best advice about listening to Bedunah’s second album Plug It In and Play is indeed to “ plug it in and play, play loud as you can” as the verse says.