Bret Michaels – Jammin’ With Friends

Shane | 7 August 2013 | Reply

Poor Boy Records
June 2013
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
5/10

Bret Michaels must be the most environmentally friendly rocker on the planet, and on Jammin’ With Friends he again throws down a collection of recycled tunes from his Poison heyday and his ever-less-original solo albums, of which this is ostensibly his fifth.

The main selling point is the “With Friends” part of the album title – Michael Anthony, Ace Frehley, Phil Collen, Ricky Medlocke, Gary Rossington, Frank Hannon, Jimmy Buffett, Loretta Lynn, Joe Perry, Leslie West, Miley Cyrus, C C DeVille and plenty more all pop up to add their considerable talents to what is a likeable collection of songs, but the pointlessness of the exercise looms over the whole affair.

Opener Nothin’ But A Good Time is countrified and features some rapper shouting for no good reason. Good time nullified. Sweet Home Alabama, doesn’t rise above competent bar room boogie despite Medlocke & Rossington’s presence, and Talk Dirty To Me says it features Scot Coogan and Mark McGrath but it is so faithful to Poison’s original that it’s barely worth them showing up.

Collen adds a Def Leppard-alike riff to stripper-friendly anthem Get Your Rock On, but a banjoed-up Unskinny Bop is a cheap knock-off rather than a new take on the song.

The App Song will no doubt polarise listeners – cheesy country rock-lite, or clever radio-friendly rocker? You’ll have to be your own judge, ‘cos they don’t make an app for that…

Every Rose Has It’s Thorn appears in two separate versions, and Loretta Lynn’s elder-country stateswoman take trumps the version from Freedom Of Sounds which makes an encore appearance here.

Several other tracks pop up from Freedom Of Sound, Custom Built and Letter From Death Row, and there’s another handful of Poison covers (7 songs in all as two of them have two versions here) and more of his solo stuff redone. As admirable as recycling is, constantly reissuing the same songs ad infinitum has got to be a bit of a joke now Bret – write, or have someone write for you – some new songs, please.

Michaels has long fancied himself a country rocker from time to time and it’s high time he stopped hedging his bets on radio rock and just bit the bullet and made a dedicated country-flavoured album.

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