Whiskey Myers swagger confidently into southern rock's promised land

Southern rock’s brightest stars Whiskey Myers turn up the dazzle on sixth album Tornillo

Whiskey Myers - Tornillo cover art
(Image: © Wiggy Thump/Thirty Tigers)

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With this sixth album, Whiskey Myers have reached the promised land that gave us Lynyrd Skynyrd’s star-crossed Street Survivors

That’s not a comparison to be brandished indiscriminately, but Whiskey Myers are clearly cut from the same cloth: a bona-fide rock band, but with country heritage – writing songs about real people, and mixing styles with a confident swagger.

The six-piece have embellished their sound with brass, female backing singers and, on two tracks, a string quartet, and the results are uniformly stunning. 

John Wayne and Antioch sound like southern classics, Feet’s boasts ‘chicken scratch’ guitar as good as anything that ever came out of Florida, and The Wolf howls with righteous fury. Mission To Mars even sounds like they’ve rocked up a JJ Cale classic.

Take a bow, then, singer and principal songwriter Cody Cannon and lead/slide guitarist John Jeffers. Tornillo is superb.

Neil Jeffries

Freelance contributor to Classic Rock and several of its offshoots since 2006. In the 1980s he began a 15-year spell working for Kerrang! intially as a cub reviewer and later as Geoff Barton’s deputy and then pouring precious metal into test tubes as editor of its Special Projects division. Has spent quality time with Robert Plant, Keith Richards, Ritchie Blackmore, Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore – and also spent time in a maximum security prison alongside Love/Hate. Loves Rush, Aerosmith and beer. Will work for food.

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