The Boxmasters

Dapper trio the Boxmasters play a breed of country that Nashville cats don't make any more, hilariously depicting the lives of wanderlust middle-aged schlubs whose best days are behind them. Basically, their template seems to be the loser in the Statler Brothers' 1965 "Flowers on the Wall" who plays solitaire 'til dawn with a deck of 51. Since no other active band excels at this sort of sport, it's no surprise these guys come off as sensitive about the news peg journalists inevitably latch onto: namely, that frontman W.R. "Bud" Thornton is better known as Billy Bob. But this is no vanity act, and it's hard to imagine musicians working harder to camouflage the celebrity angle. In 10 months, between June 2008 and April 2009, the Boxmasters released the equivalent of five full-lengths -- two double-discs (each split between originals and covers) plus a more perfunctory holiday set. The originals sardonically focus on deceit in love and business, husbands in the doghouse and self-imposed financial disaster; the covers venture beyond country to rope in rocking Brits from the Beatles to Mott the Hoople -- which might explain why the band titled its 2009 album Modbilly.