The Getaway Drivers

Madison Wisconsin based band The Getaway Drivers was founded by Bob Manor in 2004, but took awhile to morph into the present band. Bob also handles vocals, guitar and keyboard for the band. Most of the tunes were written by Manor and Sheila Shingley, who adds wonderful lead and backup vocals, as well as fiddle to the CD. You’ve got to love a band whose tag line on their website reads Made Bail, Will Travel!

The band effectively mixes the mood and feel of the music on the disc, from the eerie, spooky sounding opener “Bottle & Suitcase,” to rollicking upbeat and pop-ish tune “Oh Trudy,” to the softer sounds of Sheila’s voice. Sheila handles lead vocals on the beautiful “popgrass” tune “Stay” and sounds remarkably like Alison Krauss. This really is a great song, and I hope the band makes more use of Sheila’s voice as lead in the future. Another song she handles lead on, “Won’t Ask Why” is another whisper of a song; mainly Sheila’s voice and soft strings-cello and guitar. I hear more and more bands using the cello, which I think lends a great deal to the songs in which it is used. The next tune couldn’t be more different. It is a guitar driven, feedback laced instrumental called “Wrecking Ball,” which I really like.

The songs on the disc sound like they could have been played by two or possibly three different bands; a bluesy, guitar focused band, a country/bluegrass type band, and a band dedicated to writing more “radio friendly” tunes, such as “Mystified.” The band handles all these styles well on the CD, which is a great debut CD by a band whose members are certainly not rookies! I especially like the following lines directly from the bands Web site, www.thegetawaydrivers.net, which shows they share some of the same values we at least think we have here at the Web site!

“Thanks for stopping by our website. We hope you’ll like our music. More importantly, we hope you’ll support local music and teach your children to appreciate music for it’s own sake and encourage them to take up an instrument if they have an ounce of interest in it. The world would be a much sorrier place without it.”