Album Details

• Artist: Rick Hornyak
• Album: Marigold
• Label: N/A
• Year of Release: 2011
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: carlita on 2013-03-10

It takes serious guts and chutzpah to sell your material possessions, pack up the world you knew and pursue your passion in a musical city that's been touched by many classic rock and Americana legends. Austin Texas based Rick Hornyak did just that and provides the roadtrip driving soundtrack you might imagine he wrote on the way to his next destination, choosing to pick up his life and follow his dream on his debut album Marigold. Much like happily or nervously leaving the town in the rear-view mirror on the album cover (and perhaps the naysayers who wished he would stay), you root for the protagonist to prove them wrong and feel the open road, free wind in your hair on several tracks.

A vivid subplot also emerges as the listener gets a glimpse of the woman he initially took along but had to leave behind somewhere along the way on "Cigarettes" and "Far Away From Home".  Yep, sometimes the necessary choice is not always the popular choice as he's "Moving On (Without You)" to "See This Through". Rick, with a rugged manly Bruce Springsteen "Born to Run" voice, sings with a hint of earnest sorrow of love lost and the confusion of new love found as you might come to expect from a country Americana/honky-tonk record, but adds a signature shot of 60's Bob Dylan folk storytelling, surprisingly a little funk and Austin guitar influences to the mix.  

Grappling with an old "foolish love" and the excitement of a dangerous stranger on "So Many Times Before", this journey ends far from where you started and reveals itself just like a Marigold- sweet, musty, multi-layered and in dusty spring bloom.

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