The thing that makes you hate contemporary country music isn't the instruments -- hell, what's to hate about a steel guitar or fiddle -- it's those asinine country lyrics that make you want to stick the Dixie Chicks in a meat grinder. "Nashville Guitars" eliminates all those tales about dogs and pickup trucks and features an amazing variety of southern-fried instrumentals.
Kelly Black and Tom Hemby open with a couple of nimble honky-tonk burners while Mark Casstevens bluegrass-flavored "Cowtown" echoes some of his work with Randy Travis and Brooks and Dunn. While the album can grow tedious after repeated listenings, the CD highlights many great musicians whose names have been buried in the album credits for decades. Players like Reggie Young, (Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man") finally get first billing -- and that makes "Nashville Guitars" valuable enough.
