Lee Roy Parnell

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whose real skill lies in crafting a guitar line that wraps itself around the vocal component of a song in a distinctive way. Parnell's career goes back to a stint with Kinky Friedman's Texas Jewboys in 1976, and in the mid-1990s some strong songs and a bit of hillbilly charm put him in the top reaches of the charts with songs like "Heart's Desire." Dropped by the Arista label after Nashville began turning out paeans to domesticity, he just kept on making music with his voice, pen, and slide and electric guitars, by turns delicate and growling.

Parnell's music is a southern brew with lots of blues, Memphis soul, and gospel only slightly damped down by the discipline of country songcraft. He's one of the few country artists who can use African American backup singers without seeming to be trying to pull off something artificial, and his latest album, Back to the Well, is full of ingenious old soul moves, both in Parnell's own guitar playing and in the ways the songs set up a space for the guitar. Most of the songs were written by Parnell in collaboration with one of a group of top Nashville songsmiths, people who obviously admire what he does.