"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:

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."