Finally, Rich’s story can be told

John Rich

“Underneath the Same Moon” (BNA/Legacy)

* *

DYLAN once sang “there’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all,” but in the music business there’s no such thing as failure after success comes around.

Case in point: John Rich’s debut solo album, recorded and shelved five years before he and songwriting partner Kenny Alphin hit it big and rich as Big & Rich. “After Big & Rich’s astounding multi-platinum success in 2004-05,” trumpets the accompanying press release, “the world is finally ready for the groundbreaking solo recordings that paved their ways forward.”

Translation: Now it might sell. Actually, there are some rewards here, but they have more to do with the evolution of creativity than with knockout songs. Rich was an original member of Lonestar, and most of what he recorded here is closer to that band’s romantic country-pop than the boundary-pushing mix of rock, country and R&B; he and Alphin are making now.

The one bit of real musical magic is “New Jerusalem,” an a cappella gospel rave-up featuring the Fairfield Four. Rich spends the rest of the album (in stores March 14) mostly yearning for lovers absent or nonexistent.

The upshot: Maybe his solo effort didn’t deserve mothballing, but a two- or three-song single would have been plenty.

-- Randy Lewis