AllMusic
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Four years after their acclaimed debut, The Tractors finally delivered their full-fledged follow-up, Farmers in a Changing World, in late 1998. (A holiday album, Have Yourself a Tractors Christmas, appeared in 1995, but that doesn't count as a sequel to The Tractors). During that time, contemporary country became even more infatuated with the pop-country crossover, as the success of Shania Twain and Faith Hill proved. The title of the album hints at that situation, but the Tractors ignore such trends, choosing to synthesize a plethora of American roots musics into a distinctive sound -- they're farmers in a changing world. Sure, they remain rooted in country, but they try a bunch of other things, including soul, New Orleans R&B, and rockabilly with "The Elvis Thing," backed by no less than Scotty Moore, James Burton, and DJ Fontana. What ties it all together is Steve Ripley's fine songwriting and the band's excellent taste in covers; the material is so good that the eclecticism doesn't seem jumbled -- it makes sense. It may have taken a while for the album to have been recorded, but the wait was worth it.
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Four years after their acclaimed debut, The Tractors finally delivered their full-fledged follow-up, Farmers in a Changing World, in late 1998. (A holiday album, Have Yourself a Tractors Christmas, appeared in 1995, but that doesn't count as a sequel to The Tractors). During that time, contemporary country became even more infatuated with the pop-country crossover, as the success of Shania Twain and Faith Hill proved. The title of the album hints at that situation, but the Tractors ignore such trends, choosing to synthesize a plethora of American roots musics into a distinctive sound -- they're farmers in a changing world. Sure, they remain rooted in country, but they try a bunch of other things, including soul, New Orleans R&B, and rockabilly with "The Elvis Thing," backed by no less than Scotty Moore, James Burton, and DJ Fontana. What ties it all together is Steve Ripley's fine songwriting and the band's excellent taste in covers; the material is so good that the eclecticism doesn't seem jumbled -- it makes sense. It may have taken a while for the album to have been recorded, but the wait was worth it.
USA Today
Brian Mansfield
Tractors’ pull still strong
(3 1/2 stars out of four)
Four years ago, this bunch of middle-ages Okies stunned country music with a raucous boogie-woogie tune called Baby Likes To Rock It and a preconception-pounding album that sold 2 million copies. The world may have changed in the ensuing years, but The Tractors aren’t that much different: Their music’s still the same hybrid of roadhouse shuffles, honking Western swing and gruff, multi-tracked vocals. Songs like Shortenin’ Bread, Poor Boy Shuffle and I Wouldn’t Tell You No Lie don’t sound any more country than Baby Likes To Rock It did, and none of it’s as bizarre as hidden track Hale-Bopp Boogie.
Brian Mansfield
Tractors’ pull still strong
(3 1/2 stars out of four)
Four years ago, this bunch of middle-ages Okies stunned country music with a raucous boogie-woogie tune called Baby Likes To Rock It and a preconception-pounding album that sold 2 million copies. The world may have changed in the ensuing years, but The Tractors aren’t that much different: Their music’s still the same hybrid of roadhouse shuffles, honking Western swing and gruff, multi-tracked vocals. Songs like Shortenin’ Bread, Poor Boy Shuffle and I Wouldn’t Tell You No Lie don’t sound any more country than Baby Likes To Rock It did, and none of it’s as bizarre as hidden track Hale-Bopp Boogie.
Pittsburgh/Tribune-Review
By Michael A Capozzoli Jr.
The Tractors’ new album, “Farmers in a Changing World” is simply brilliant. Songs such as “ I Wouldn’t Tell You Know Lie”. “The Elvis Thing” and “Way Too Late” are superb examples of the potential for country music genre.
On the album, nearly four years in the making, Tractor lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Steve Ripley displays his many talents. Much of the music is reminiscent of the classic country rock recordings by The Band in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Not only is this a must-buy disc, the music here is important. Ripley and company have drawn from their early rock, swing, R&B and, yes, country roots and come up with a masterpiece.
The music is right-on, and Ripley’s talents as a vocalist really shines.
He sings with the introspection of a world-weary traveler. A man who has gone beyond the cliché of been there, done that, and now just simply want to go home to familiar surroundings and simpler times to find spiritual renewal.
Hats off to Arista Records Nashville for having the insight and determination to let the Tractors record music they wanted, free of radio programmers’ opinions, record industry consultants’ spread sheets and marketing reports’ results. This disc is going to be huge!
Maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to see other record labels taking some chances. Someone in Nashville once again is finally making music for music’s sake. What an idea!
By Michael A Capozzoli Jr.
The Tractors’ new album, “Farmers in a Changing World” is simply brilliant. Songs such as “ I Wouldn’t Tell You Know Lie”. “The Elvis Thing” and “Way Too Late” are superb examples of the potential for country music genre.
On the album, nearly four years in the making, Tractor lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Steve Ripley displays his many talents. Much of the music is reminiscent of the classic country rock recordings by The Band in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Not only is this a must-buy disc, the music here is important. Ripley and company have drawn from their early rock, swing, R&B and, yes, country roots and come up with a masterpiece.
The music is right-on, and Ripley’s talents as a vocalist really shines.
He sings with the introspection of a world-weary traveler. A man who has gone beyond the cliché of been there, done that, and now just simply want to go home to familiar surroundings and simpler times to find spiritual renewal.
Hats off to Arista Records Nashville for having the insight and determination to let the Tractors record music they wanted, free of radio programmers’ opinions, record industry consultants’ spread sheets and marketing reports’ results. This disc is going to be huge!
Maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to see other record labels taking some chances. Someone in Nashville once again is finally making music for music’s sake. What an idea!
THE TRACTORS: A FRESH BREEZE FROM TULSA
Robyn Flans
Mix, Mar 1, 1999
In 1994, The Tractors seemed to defy the laws of Nashville. Bands were not traditionally big sellers, these guys weren't hunkish in the least, they didn't live in town, they produced their record themselves and didn't hire session cats to play on it. But they still managed to take the country music world by storm. Their self-titled first album, powered by the hit "Baby Likes to Rock It," became the fastest-selling debut by a group to go Platinum. Ultimately, it sold over 2 million copies and became the top-selling debut country album of the year. After riding that album for two years-much longer than the average country act-The Tractors began their new project in 1996. Two years later, they emerged with Farmers in a Changing World, an appropriate title for a band that is using the technology of the '90s to craft an aesthetic rooted in the early '50s.
"I'm not just fascinated, but obsessed, with the idea of first takes, and I use everything I can find that allows me to get closer to first takes and the energy and life that I think was in Chuck Berry records," explains The Tractors' leader, guitarist and engineer, Steve Ripley. "In Hank Williams' and Chuck Berry's days, they didn't have any time or very many microphones, and it was the limitations that made their records great. I learned from a guy named Gene Sullivan, who wrote 'When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again' in the '40s. He was a country star in an act called Wiley & Gene. Wiley played the fiddle and Gene played guitar and sang, and those records were recorded with one microphone, as Hank's probably were. Mixing back then was putting the guitar player further away from the microphone. It was first or second takes, even on those history-making records. Then, everybody was playing together. Now, if you have everybody playing together, you have to go through getting the levels on 20 different microphones.
"On an old Elvis record, they might have had four or five mics," he continues, "but most of the sound and level came from Elvis' mic, and then Scotty Moore's amp for the guitar was five, ten feet away from that, so really, the sound of that record is that guitar coming through Elvis' big vocal mic. So the question is, how do you make a record that can be played alongside other modern records, and still have some of that stuff? For us, the method is to do things one at a time for the first take and the sound. Sometimes we're playing the whole thing together, too, but if we do that, it's for that sound and it still might be recorded with one or two microphones so you have that bleed in the room. On 'Tulsa Shuffle Revisited' on the first album, there were something like 14 people playing together at once-including four drummers, three guitar players, a harmonica player and a couple of B3 players-but I still recorded it with two microphones for the equivalent of one, but a stereo kind of recording of the whole room.
"The computerized hard disk recording has a cut-and-paste ability that appeals to me," Ripley continues. "What I love most about Pro Tools is cutting one guy at a time-the J.J. Cale school of recording, where things are put on one noise at a time, almost a sculpting process. Somebody's always got to start the tune, and in The Tractors' case, it's almost always me because I'm writing the song. So I'll sketch out the shape of the song with an acoustic guitar to a Roger Linn drum machine. It's a SMPTE-based thing, so there's a structure which you can move things around to, including Jamie [Oldaker] when he plays the real drums, because it's fixed with the right tempo and time structure. Almost always, we record to the Studer through the Neve [8078], and when we want to do some moving around, we put it into Pro Tools so it's still captured as analog.
Robyn Flans
Mix, Mar 1, 1999
In 1994, The Tractors seemed to defy the laws of Nashville. Bands were not traditionally big sellers, these guys weren't hunkish in the least, they didn't live in town, they produced their record themselves and didn't hire session cats to play on it. But they still managed to take the country music world by storm. Their self-titled first album, powered by the hit "Baby Likes to Rock It," became the fastest-selling debut by a group to go Platinum. Ultimately, it sold over 2 million copies and became the top-selling debut country album of the year. After riding that album for two years-much longer than the average country act-The Tractors began their new project in 1996. Two years later, they emerged with Farmers in a Changing World, an appropriate title for a band that is using the technology of the '90s to craft an aesthetic rooted in the early '50s.
"I'm not just fascinated, but obsessed, with the idea of first takes, and I use everything I can find that allows me to get closer to first takes and the energy and life that I think was in Chuck Berry records," explains The Tractors' leader, guitarist and engineer, Steve Ripley. "In Hank Williams' and Chuck Berry's days, they didn't have any time or very many microphones, and it was the limitations that made their records great. I learned from a guy named Gene Sullivan, who wrote 'When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again' in the '40s. He was a country star in an act called Wiley & Gene. Wiley played the fiddle and Gene played guitar and sang, and those records were recorded with one microphone, as Hank's probably were. Mixing back then was putting the guitar player further away from the microphone. It was first or second takes, even on those history-making records. Then, everybody was playing together. Now, if you have everybody playing together, you have to go through getting the levels on 20 different microphones.
"On an old Elvis record, they might have had four or five mics," he continues, "but most of the sound and level came from Elvis' mic, and then Scotty Moore's amp for the guitar was five, ten feet away from that, so really, the sound of that record is that guitar coming through Elvis' big vocal mic. So the question is, how do you make a record that can be played alongside other modern records, and still have some of that stuff? For us, the method is to do things one at a time for the first take and the sound. Sometimes we're playing the whole thing together, too, but if we do that, it's for that sound and it still might be recorded with one or two microphones so you have that bleed in the room. On 'Tulsa Shuffle Revisited' on the first album, there were something like 14 people playing together at once-including four drummers, three guitar players, a harmonica player and a couple of B3 players-but I still recorded it with two microphones for the equivalent of one, but a stereo kind of recording of the whole room.
"The computerized hard disk recording has a cut-and-paste ability that appeals to me," Ripley continues. "What I love most about Pro Tools is cutting one guy at a time-the J.J. Cale school of recording, where things are put on one noise at a time, almost a sculpting process. Somebody's always got to start the tune, and in The Tractors' case, it's almost always me because I'm writing the song. So I'll sketch out the shape of the song with an acoustic guitar to a Roger Linn drum machine. It's a SMPTE-based thing, so there's a structure which you can move things around to, including Jamie [Oldaker] when he plays the real drums, because it's fixed with the right tempo and time structure. Almost always, we record to the Studer through the Neve [8078], and when we want to do some moving around, we put it into Pro Tools so it's still captured as analog.