From Hell to Breakfast: A Taste of Sugar Hill's Texas Singer-Songwriters [Audio CD] Various Artists

From Hell To Breakfast, a collection of troubadours, roots-rockers and assorted honky-tonk heroes, is a swell sampler of Sugar Hill's roster, past and present. Two cuts each from Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark are haunting and sweet, respectively. Terry Allen's "Amarillo Highway" falls prey to the macho posturing that plays big, no doubt, on fraternity rows all across the Lone Star state--but his rollicking rhythm number "Gone to Texas" carries a chip on its shoulder so hilarious that it more than makes up for it. Funnier still, the Austin Lounge Lizards mercilessly parody singer-songwriter conventions on "Old Blevins." Hearing Robert Earl Keen's original version of "The Road Goes on Forever" is nice, too, but his spare and introspective "Dreadful Selfish Crime" is as impressive an example of the singer-songwriter idiom as we're likely to hear. --David Cantwell