Reviews

Popular bands often cover tracks that sometimes make it as a single on the radio or as a hidden track on a record but rarely do popular bands make covering music into side projects. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes may have started as a joke, or nothing more than a fun hobby, but the band continues to release cover albums every few years and occasionally tour.
 
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes consists of various members of different bands, including NOFX’s Fat Mike, Swingin’ Utters’ Spike Slawson, Foo Fighter’s Chris Shiflett and Lagwagon’s Joey Cape and Dave Raum. Every few years the band releases a new album with a different theme and their latest release, Love Their Country, is all about having a honky-tonk time.
 
The album starts out slow with Johnny Cash’s “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old).” The song starts out like the original Cash hit but a minute in, the tempo speeds up and the Gimme Gimmes give the tune a new punk spin.
 
The second track on the record “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky,” another song by Cash, is among the best tracks on the album. The song is fast, upbeat and almost sounds like it was made to be a punk rock tune.
 
The album features cover tracks of artists including John Denver, The Dixie Chicks and Kenny Rogers. The best tracks on the record - besides the Cash covers - are “Desperado,” “On the Road Again,” “Jolene” and “East Bound and Down.” The twelve songs only play out to about twenty-five minutes of music but the assortment of music is good and the tracks are likeable even to the least likely of country fans. The album closes out with “Sunday Morning Coming Down on Me,” another Cash cover. 
 
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes is a fun and enjoyable cover band. Other albums worth checking out include Take A Break and Blownin’ In the Wind.