The fetishizing of all things white trash is a major turn-off for me, and it’s a tribute to the guitar playing of Southern Culture on the Skids’ Rick Miller that I can get around his band’s “hicks—laugh at them” shtick for three or four songs. Despite the name Truckstop Honeymoon and the song “Waffle House Booth” (about getting thrown out for making out there), Mike West and Katie Euliss’ folk/country/bluegrass mix has a different feel. There’s no “look at the dumb things they do,” nor do they employ the “we’re just like them” dodge. They talk about these people because they like them, and the details in the songs aren’t there because they’re intrinsically funny. They’re there because they help get to the heart of the people in the songs.

 

There’s also a lot of love on the album starting with “Johnny & June,” a song that identifies the Cashes as a positive role model for their relationship. The album’s most insightful lyric comes in a fight song, though, “Know It All.” In it, Euliss sings to her man, “I ain’t letting you drive my truck / You can’t get behind the wheel / You drink too much and ride the clutch / and you don’t care how I feel.” We are dropped into the middle of a lovers’ spat and for all of her worry about the condition of her truck, the issue is how he treats her. Few other songs move with such speed from fun to insight as swiftly and effortlessly, and that sort of good sense is central to Delivery Boy.