Broken Promises is probably the best alt-country album you've never heard. And, unless you're like me and scan the dollar bins at used CD stores or, even more unlikely, you actually read these words and act on them, you'll never hear it. It wasn't released on a major label (Code Terra), it didn't get any radio airplay as far as I can tell, and it was by a unknown band led by an unknown musician. I wouldn't have given it a listen except that when I was browsing the cheap bin, the cover appealed to me enough to pick it up and flip it over to see the back, wherein I discovered a cornucopia of famous musicians and producers listed as the producers of each song, including T-Bone Burnett, Lenny Kravitz, Willie Nelson, Meshell N'degeocello, Sheryl Crow, Rob Thomas, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, and Jakob Dylan. If all of those folks thought this was a band to work with, there had to be something there worth a dollar, so I took a chance. A better dollar was never spent.

Rusty Truck is basically a vanity project for the photographer Mark Seliger. Having gotten to know all of these musicians over the last decade as a premier photographer for Rolling Stone and other magazines, he got bit with the bug to make his own album and was encouraged to do so by Kravitz, who helped him record his first song. After that, the project took on a life of its own, as friends of friends offered to help, finallly culminating in Broken Promises. I generally look askance at something like this, particularly when it's a celebrity taking advantage of their status in one field to bypass the entry requirements into another, such as when a musician thinks he can act or an actress who thinks she can write. There's exceptions, such as Prince's Purple Rain (which is so autobiographical, or wish fulfillment, that he didn't have to act much) or Hugh Laurie's The Gun Seller, but most of the time we have to suffer something like Mariah Carey's Glitter. Maybe it's because Seliger's project is unassuming, coming out from a small label even with its heavy hitters and pushing the celebrity connections to the back.

For all its different producing teams, the songs share a common sound anchored by Seliger's voice, which is perfect for the alt-country genre: slightly nasalish, with just a touch of twang, in the mid-range. Most of the instrumentation centers on an acoustic guitar, with banjo, steel guitar, and mandolin accents. A couple of songs stretch the formula to country-rock, but nothing here is head-banging.. The most country song is "1000 Kisses," a duet between Seliger and Willie Nelson, and it's surprisingly effective, as their voices do not clash, which is sometimes a challenge given Willie's idiosyncratic phrasing and wavering vocals. The most rocking song is likely the opener, "Everytime," which sounds most close to producer Jakob Dylan's band, The Wallflowers. The song with the best beat, and the one which will get under your skin as soon as you hear it, is "Malibu Canyon," which sounds like something rescued from the outtakes prior to the recording of Hotel California by the Eagles.

While no song is unlistenable, and if I put this album on I never find myself reaching for the skip button, some work better than others lyrically. The most awkward metaphor, which in a way makes it even more country given country's tendency to take a metaphor and stretch it like a taffy pull at the State fair, is the one used in "Tangled in the Fence," which compares two people meeting as if they were a train wreck ("Now he's branded on her, and she's branded on him, and they're tangled in the fence.") Much better are the lyrics for "Cold Ground," which isn't to say they are any easier to take, as the embittered lover protagonist seems to be saying that he'd like to see his missing lover again, but not in the way you might think ("I come to see you in the night / I wanna see you lying down, into that cold, cold, cold, cold ground"). I don't think you can get any more bitter than that. (I should note that I also like this song because of the interplay between Seliger and Sheryl Crow's backing vocals.) "Candy" also plays against type as it is a Mexican-tinged sound and lyrical theme about a border prostitute rather than just some sweet senorita that the singer wants to see again.

I'm sure part of the reason I like this album is for its combination of country, folk, and rock sounds, with connections to both L.A. and Texas, for which I can reflect my own life experiences. Many of us contain those contradictions, growing up in small towns and now living in large cities, weaned on Jackson Browne, CSN&Y, the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt, and not quite able to understand the gangsta rap and hip-hop that is the sound of the streets that we currently live on. The saddest thing about Rusty Truck is, as a vanity project, it's probably never going to see a sequel, and that's probably the only "Broken Promise" on this entire CD.