Falling under the 'big tent' side of the Country music equation comes Big Bob Young and his blues-laced debut album "Hard Way To Make A Dollar." A member of various parts of the US Armed Forces for 23 years, Big Bob Young certainly his lived a lot of life that serves him well as he constructs his stories present on the disc. "Ship Of Fools" has a deep blues-rock undercurrent to it that's actually not far from what has helped make Jimmy Buffet a long-time favorite (when he's not singing party songs). Vocally Big Bob Young also resembles Buffett's weary, aged voice. "Best Of A Bad Situation" finds Big Bob singing about the hard-to-ignore fact of a musician's strange life. Fans of 90s country shuffles should give this barely two minute song a spin.

While I don't think anyone could claim that Big Bob Young was gifted with the best voice, he does use it well on ballads like "Somewhere Tonight," where his sharp songwriting finds the fifty-something describing bad choices young children make while the parents simultaneously pray for those children to make it through their choices. "Bury Me In Dixie" has a sound and lyric that's indebted to the styling of Alabama while "I Call It Love" is a Hammond-filled ballad from a hopeless romantic that would be a great song for someone like Craig Morgan or Kenny Rogers to record.

The title track is a horn-filled, partyin' ode to those women who work very hard in the bars and honky tonks so the rest of us can enjoy our time away from our lives. The musicianship explodes here and it's also present on the honky Tonkin' track "Can I Take You Home." Sure, Big Bob Young's not gonna sell a million copies of "Hard Way To Make A Dollar" but that doesn't mean that the album isn't worth hearing either. In fact, "Hard Way To Make A Dollar" is a fine album that showcases the kind of great talent that comes in all shapes, sizes and ages in our great country.