**1/2 Mike Ness

UNDER THE INFLUENCES

(Time Bomb)

Social Distortion's head cowpoke moseys out on the range and rounds up a dozen more rockabilly and country humdingers for his second solo album in less than six months, this one composed entirely of covers and cranked out on the fly with the line-up he took on the road in support of last June's Cheating at Solitaire. Some of the repertoire will register as willfully obscure to those unversed in backwoods C&W discography: journeyman Wayne Walker's "All I Can Do Is Cry"; honky-tonk gal Jean Shepard's "A Thief in the Night"; Billy Lee Riley's tearjerker "One More Time" as opposed to the obvious "Flying Saucer Rock 'n Roll"; a lost Wanda Jackson single, "Funnel of Love." As such, Under the Influences occasionally comes off as a résumé -- all right already there, cowboy, you've got a nice record collection -- but the big problem is that the disc finds Ness sounding less like the rock-and-roll primitivist he imagines himself to be than like a sculpted, middle-of-the-road ranchhand: he's all hat and no cattle.

The band, including the excellent guitar and pedal-steel player Chris Lawrence and some uncredited fiddle, props Ness up on his horse like a punk-rock Lash LaRue, and inasmuch as Ness's own guitar playing is buried a bit deeper here (the guy still refuses to disconnect his friggin' stompbox), the disc sounds passably honky-tonkish. That'll probably be enough to satisfy the faithful, but just in case it isn't, Ness includes his cover of the Bobby Fuller/Clash hit "I Fought the Law" -- fine, but redundant, and he knows it -- as well as a disappointing, drawn-out rehash of Social D's hit "Ball and Chain." Which isn't to say that "Ball and Chain" wouldn't make a fine country song -- like a lot of Ness's own best material over the years, it was practically a country song to begin with -- but this version ain't it.

-- Carly Carioli