Russ Still and The Moonshiners


Russ Still and The Moonshiners “It Ain’t Me” is a new single about putting the blame where it belongs, instead of on Russ Still of Russ Still and The Moonshiners, the Alabama based, rockin’ country band. The first single to surface from their sixth release to date on what vows to be their best, Goin’ Alabama. The follow up to 2018’s – Bootleg (Batch 432) is shaping up to be a monster when you hear what “It Ain’t Me” has to offer. The feeling thus far is that it will rock a little harder than tracks like ‘It’s Hard,” but should be more along the lines of “99 Percent.” 


If you are already a fan of Russ Still and The Moonshiners, you need no introduction, but other readers and fans of country music do if they want to hear something refreshing and see where it takes them. And having mentioned some other tracks it is worth checking out everything by this great band hiding in the deep south. The method of delving back to see what Russ Still is all about in-order-to stay tuned into “It Ain’t Me” from a writing perspective proved to be worth more than the admission price for country fans. Before I listened with headphones on, I tool a good look into it and then hit play.

I discovered that not only do they live up to their usual expectations, they go a step beyond, and it might even be because of Georgia’s co-songwriter Keal Franklin. But that is only-guess after spending time on the band to feed a word about it without knowing more about this downright smashing outfit as I find a lot of today’s country to lack something. Authenticity is usually what the difference is to me, and this track passes the authenticity test and so do Russ Still and The Moonshiners. What else there is to know about Russ Still can be found by looking up the usual channels, but it’s not a flashy band or anything like that. 

“It Ain’t Me” succeeds on its own merits, like all there is to hear from, and it’s not anything to do with Covid times but it does cover the subject of blame culture without being political about it. And hopefully by the time you read this it will be further behind us anyway, and it is more about uniting than dividing but it is a good observation, nevertheless. 


“It Ain’t Me” rocks with the best of intentions during a time of uncertainty with a positive, not a negative message about the state of our nation and perhaps even the world economical lines throughout history if you read enough into it, but it’s really just a fun loving look at hypocrisy. Music can warn against culture barriers without having to be too serious about it, but it can also be contrived. “It Ain’t Me” defies those barriers and supports the idea that stereotyping and always blaming someone is not the answer. You can argue with that idea, but once I heard it I couldn’t turn it off for several spins.

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Trace Whittaker
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
9/2020

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