Search - Mike Craver :: Shining Down

"On "SHINING DOWN", piano player and singer-songwriter Mike Craver's subjects include a lovably coarse female music fan named "Diamond Lil," a young man who loses his legs and his soul in the Battle of Argonne Forest and a 1920s-era woman who realizes that her would-be fiance of 10 years is going to leave her an old maid. Some of the best tracks, including the title cut, come from Craver's 1998 Old West-themed musical "Bosh and Moonshine." In the creepily funny "When I Was a Little Wee Babe," gay undertaker Reverend Mould tells of how he went from performing mock funerals for his dolls to opening a business in which repairing bullet holes in real corpses costs a little extra. In "The Butterfield Stage," a Dodge City resident recounts meeting his mail order bride - a woman who turned out to look a little like a horse and whose teeth "were like stars - they came out at night." While many of Craver's songs sound sort of idiosyncratically contemporary, Craver is masterful at capturing the sound and feel of past eras. In addition to "The Butterfield Stage" (presented as a jaunty saloon ballad), "That Wicky Wacky Hula Hula Honka Honolulu Honey of Mine," from his musical "Radio Gals," is an original tongue-twisting number that perfectly re-creates the goofiness of the 1920s Hawaiian craze. Craver provides plenty of laughs, but his songs and his characters have too much heart to be dismissed lightly. "Shining Down" is a little more piecemeal and less dark than Craver's brilliant 1999 disc, "Wagoner's Lad." However, it's a joy and it seems better with every listen." --Wayne Bledsoe. KNOXVILLE NEWS AND SENTINEL