Live at Billy Bob's Texas: Moe & Joe

Album Review

This live, circa the end of the 20th century show (no date is given in the liner notes) is billed to both Bandy and Stampley. However, it's not exactly a duet album. About one-third of it is Stampley solo, one-third of it is Bandy solo, and then they team together in a crowd-pleasing manner for the remaining third of the program. So you get to hear Stampley-associated numbers like "All These Things" and then Bandy going it solo for a while before they team up for numbers like "Roll on Big Mama," "Honky Tonk Queen," "Just Good Ol' Boys," and "Where's the Dress." The duo numbers do have a spark generated by repartee that's missing from the solo spots. It's another unsurprising-sounding document in the Live at Billy Bob's Texas series, capturing them and the crowd having fun, but hardly likely to challenge better, more definitive versions of these tunes in the listener's minds. That's certainly true of "All These Things," which has the kind of adult contemporary-friendly electric keyboards that should be banned from honky tonks on sight.