An international cast of Grammy winners and a few Nashville ne'er do wells came together to create Reckless Johnny Wales' CD, debut release for this extraordinary Music City aggregation.

The . . . tysomething Reckless began his career in Boston and has been active in San Francisco, Kumamoto, Europe, Auckland and now Nashville. I first got wind of this warped and mind-bending project last year when pal Mark Miller, engineer of the Grammy-winning Emmylou Harris & the Nash Ramblers Live at the Ryman CD, played me a couple of tracks such as the wistful tale of regret, "Hollow", the insightful and hilarious "Other People", (second cousin to "Short People"?) and the timely "Enuff is Enuff", stuffed with diplomatic pleas for world peace.

I was knocked backward to hear former Doobie Brothers/Steely Dan Grammy-winning rock guitar icon Jeff "Skunk" Baxter in an acoustic setting, swapping licks with studio stringbending legends Shawn Camp and Dave Pomeroy.

British emigres Pat McInerney, drummer/percussionist for Nanci Griffith since 1987 and Michael Snow, first heard on these shores singing with John Lennon, form a rhythm section tight as a hummingbird's hiney while English folk-rock legend Clive Gregson adds his unique touches to several selections.

Little Texas leader Brady Seals provides some outstanding keyboard flourishes and Strawbs' guitarist Brian Willoughby joins in, most notably with some breathtakingly scintillating runs on "Passionate

Love", (suss the sample, I'm not making this up).

If you like quirky vocalists singing songs of substance, steer your ears this way long enough to absorb the sheer goodness of these stupendous sessions.

Thus, in closing I implore you to give a fair hearing to Reckless Johnny Wales, as they present fourteen songs by Bob Saporiti, an irascible Nashville iconoclast reminiscent of Tom Waits on a good day or Randy Newman behind a quart of Leon Redbone flavored cough syrup. This is twisted stuff, folks, wimps and weenies best stick with Celine and Shania!

-- John Lomax III