"Good ideas always start with a full glass," Mike Cooley, singer-guitarist-songwriter of Southern road warriors Drive-By Truckers, sings here in "Pulaski." But Cooley sounds as sharp and wise as a Georgia country judge on this solo debut, an acoustic live set mostly drawn from his Truckers songs. The emphasis is plain and compelling: Cooley's syrupy drawl and his acute observations of the weird in everyday life (the redneck neighbor in "Guitar Man Upstairs") and almost comic, tender salvation ("Marry Me"). The Truckers' sons-of-Skynyrd roar is usually the meat on these bones. Here you get Cooley's ideas the way they first come to him: straight, no chaser.

Listen to The Fool on Every Corner:

“He Will Break Your Heart”

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."