Have At It - Review

There's quite a story behind Have at It, the first—and apparently only—release by the Havenots. According to Disgraceland Records, some tapes were discovered in the burned-out ruins of a fire-damaged building in Knoxville in early 1999. Carefully researched by experts and reconstructed for release on compact disc, the tapes are supposedly the only existing evidence for a peculiar musical genre called "county music," blending honky-tonk, tex-mex, Merseybeat, R&B, and rockabilly into a roots-rock stew found only in East Tennessee. Nobody, the story goes, knows who made the tapes, or when.

As stories go, this one's not all that convincing. We've been asked to preserve the anonymity of the perpetrators, but careful observers of local music won't have much trouble identifying the clear, lonesome voice on the disc. But the story does represent fairly well the way Have at It, despite deep roots in well-worn traditional styles, is an entirely original and authentic combination of all the above-listed variations on rock and country.

But Have at It is no museum piece. Just as Gram Parsons married country and rock into something better than country rock, and Elvis combined blues, country, and gospel to make the Sun session recordings, Have at It is more than a collection of influences. There are plenty of them, brandished proudly and making a clear imprint on individual songs: British Invasion rock ("She Put the Hurt on Me," "Bad Boy"), old-fashioned country weepers ("Blue All Over," "Havin' Myself a Ball"), classic pop rock ("Fragile"), and gentle ballads ("Fancy Meeting You Here"). But they all fit together and sound like the work of one band. And that'll never go out of style.