Guitar Player February 1997

V-roys Just Add Ice Review

It’s obvious why Steve Earle chose this Knoxville quartet for the debut of his new label. The V-roys use tough, taut arrangements to frame their ironic lyrics, which pull up just an arm’s length short of Earleian outrage. The V-roys tightly choreographed two-guitar interplay straddles country and rock with fall into either style’s cliches, and the occasional psychedelic tidbit – a backward-tracked background wash, a faux-sitar obligato, a bagpipey counterpoint – crops up amid the crunch/twang attack. Earle and co-producer Ray Kennedy let the ‘roys ring out with an uncluttered, live-in-the-studio sound that suits them just right. RJ

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