Painfully Average
It's hard not to be irritated with this album. After just one track, it's evident that the only reason it was made is the name on the cover. You can't help but wonder how many struggling no-name musicians could have produced a collection of songs at least this good. This is not to say that Billy Bob's Private Radio is a bad album; it's just a painfully average one.

The music is mostly an updated version of the outlaw brand of country that Waylon Jennings introduced with his 1973 masterpiece, Honky Tonk Heroes. It's acoustic based, with some electric added for flair, containing songs both up-tempo and slow. The album has a nice feel to it, enhanced by the relaxed and warm production of Marty Stuart. Where things start to fall apart is with the lyrics.

Unintentional Silliness
Even though he was a musician before an actor, Billy Bob is still finding his footing as a songwriter and the results, more often than not, land in the area of cliché and unintentional silliness. In "Your Blue Shadow," he states, "I've tried to run, I've tried to hide / It's seen me laugh, it's seen me cry," on "Angelina," he sings, "This ain't no chance we're takin' / It's real love that we're makin'," and on "Dark and Mad," he proclaims, "This cigarette burns like the pain in my soul." Deep stuff, eh? The most egregious examples of this lyrical indulgence are the two talking blues/spoken word pieces; the pointless "Forever," which begins with the sound of someone lighting a cigarette, and the nine and a half minute excess of "Beauty at the Back Door." The latter of which starts with, "There's a screened-in porch in the front (pause, pause, pause, pause) but not in the back." This campiness doesn't stop with the songs either. Billy Bob tries to give the album a loose, folksy feel by including introductory bits between some songs, "Hey Marty, get in D and play somethin' lonesome…no, hillbilly lonesome."

Through the Fog
Yet, throughout all of this, one song serves as a beacon light through the fog of mediocrity. The title track, "Private Radio," is a low key, acoustic ballad of a man battling his inner demons. While the subject matter is nothing out of the ordinary, the song has a sound of authenticity that raises it above cliché and into real personal expression. It suits that in the notes, Billy Bob refers to it as the most personal song on the album, and one suspects, the hardest to write. This single song serves as hope for the entire album and sheds light on the possibility that Billy Bob is still searching for, not only the right thing to say, but the correct way to say it. This all fits into his life's general pattern as well. Think about it; before Sling Blade, he was in Steven Seagal's On Deadly Ground and before he married Angelina, he'd been through four other marriages. So this album has to be left with the thought that whatever comes next from Billy Bob will most likely be a large step in the right direction.