Anyone who ever witnessed the onstage antics of Beat Farmers drummer-singer-madman Country Dick Montana will likely never forget them. Rising up from behind his kit, bottle in hand, the 6-foot-3-inch mountain of a man with a booming basso profundo hurtled himself into each song, sometimes hurtling offstage in the process. His handful of numbers – "Lakeside Trailer Park," "Baby's Liquor'd Up," "Are You Drinkin' With Me Jesus?" – were the debauched highlight of the San Diego cow-punk band's inflammatory live set. Sadly, after 12 years, it all came to an end in November 1995 when Montana suffered a fatal aneurysm during a Beat Farmers show in Canada.

Fortunately, great memories are not all Montana left behind. This self-produced solo album, finished two months before his death, paints a rich picture of the man. Montana's outlaw, anti-hero persona comes to the fore in the plaintive Western rockers "Indigo Rider," "Picture of You" and "Anywhere." But in the latter two, Montana's deep voice is imbued with a tenderness and poignancy not usually heard in his work with the Beat Farmers. With Mojo Nixon helping out on vocals and guitar, Montana reprises his popular role as a depraved prankster in "Trendy Shitbag" and croons Dean Martin's ode to good timin', "Party Dolls and Wine," in fine lounge-act style. Montana also looks back at his garage-band past (with the late-'70s group Crawdaddys) in a cover of the loopy "Green Door."

The Devil Lied to Me includes a gospel number, "Suddenly There's a Valley," with a stellar vocal turn by Katy Moffatt that proves to be the perfect complement to Montana's other moods and voices. As Montana himself puts it in the liner notes, "Enclosed is the Country Dick Montana Story, Vol. I ... a sweeping, high-octane concept saga chronicling one man's pursuit of decency, discovery of the gutter, and triumphant withdrawal as he stumbles onto 'the meaning of it all.' " We owe him a heap of thanks for leaving us with this highly colorful document of a life lived to the max. (RS 742)

HOLLY GEORGE-WARREN