"Olney Unbound... part Baptist PREACHER, part caustic COMEDIAN, and part
existential BLUESMAN...Olney shouted, moaned and howled his SHARPLY
OBSERVED HARD-LUCK TALES and quirky character studies. Webb, who looks
like he stepped out of a CLINT EASTWOOD spaghetti western, provided A
DIZZYING ARRAY of textures, employing unconventional techniques."
-- MTV's Urge.com

"David Olney is PART CLASSIC SHOWMAN AND PART UNCONVENTIONAL
EXPERIMENTER...songs like 'Oh Yeah (Dead Man's Shoes)' with its dingy,
sinister irreverence and runaway wah-wah trombone are a way for Olney to
purge the dark and ugly corners of his imagination."
-- Nashville Scene (TN) - FULL Profile: Nashville Scene

"As the title track notes, it's not just one tough town, but a tough
planet. I saw Olney playing at a festival this spring and thought he
looked like a FEDORA-SPORTING, fiftysomething HIGH-SCHOOL PRINCIPAL
who'd SUDDENLY GONE BERSERK and was using his acoustic guitar like it
was a weapon. Love this crazy guy, LOVE THIS RECORD."
-- Rochester (NY) Democrat & Chronicle

"The [One Tough Town] disc captures the essence of his talent: droll
songs about the poisonous flip side of love, foreboding train whistles
and marauding ventriloquist dummies." -- No Depression (July issue)

"Few are capable of spinning such colorful and multi-layered yarns
with so little excess fat. On this fine new release, Olney spans the
gamut from OBSTREPEROUS GLEE to NAKED TERROR. He hits the mark
consistently throughout the album."
-- American Songwriter Magazine (July/Aug 2007)

"...literate precision with a bluesy undercurrent, and a tragic sense of
life with a LETHAL SENSE OF HUMOR. While this may be Olney's bluesiest
album to date, it's also his most PLAYFUL and MUSICALLY EXPANSIVE..."
-- Amazon.com

"Previously, with his gruff voice and GUTBUCKET ARRANGEMENTS, Olney has
recalled the later Tom Waits; on One Tough Town, that comparison remains
valid, although one also should mention Leon Redbone as a model. In his
songwriting, OLNEY CONTINUES TO DELIGHT in imaginative explorations of
historical and invented characters and situations." -- AllMusic.com

"[David] Olney and a cast of veteran Nashville session-aces that
included Dave Roe on upright bass and Sergio Webb on lead guitar
delivered smokin' hot roots blues that set an already steaming capacity
crowd on fire. Indeed, this was PURE SNAKE-HANDLIN' SHAKE THE DEVIL
FROM YOUR SOULD ROCK 'N' ROLL and Olney had the crowd...hypnotized. To
be sure, when watching Olney's UBER-COOL LIVE SHOW, one can't help but
feel sorry for the Rolling Stones." RIYL: Ralph Stanley, JJ Cale, Eric
Clapton. -- Vincent Wynne, Listen!Nashville.com review of 6/15 show

Olney's ONE-OF-A-KIND SHOW Comes to The Basement:
"What's that word for when there's only one product provider?
A monopoly. DAVID OLNEY HAS A MONOPOLY. He pretty much is a monopoly.
There's only one of him, and thus far nobody has been able to cop his
riffs. He often writes songs through characters, with the narrative
inhabiting the characters and also usually revealing something of
himself. Sometimes that something is heartbreaking, sometimes funny,
sometimes other stuff." -- The Tennessean (Nashville, TN)

"Olney delightfully straddles the white picket fence of SOUTHERN REFRIED
HONKY-TONK (with a fat-fingered touch of oompah band) and
at-the-crossroads delta blues, crafting neat, to-the-point country-folk
tunes." -- Hartford (CT) Courant

"[Olney's] songwriting consists of fairly ELABORATE STORIES GUSSIED UP
with choruses SO THAT PEOPLE CAN SING ALONG. For David Olney, the
written word is sacrosanct." -- Songs:Illinois Blogger Craig Bonnell,
http://songsillinoismp3.blogspot.com/

"Anyone who mistakenly equates 'singer-songwriter' with bland, pretty
guitar strumming will quickly be disabused of that notion... The music's
deep-fried in backroads blues, jazz, country and rock Œn' roll, while
Olney's MERCILESSLY SHARP, INTELLIGENT LYRICS take dead aim at deception
and hypocrisy of all stripes and hit the bullseye."
-- Pasadena (CA) Weekly

"Anyone interested in the true art of songwriting has an incomplete view without awareness of David Olney's work. His songs rivet you even as they startle and amaze, illuminating and enriching one's life." - Sing Out! Magazine

THE TENNESSEAN : Writer Drawn to Periphery of Revelation
"... the mysteries of God and transcendence, rumors of miracle. It's something Olney, a native New Englander, loves about the South — the obsessive drama of religion and redemption.'" full article

NEW YORK TIMES: "Writing from the point of view of historical characters has become one of Mr. Olney's most distinguishing talents, whether he's singing from the mind of a donkey that carried Jesus or imagining Jesse James's last bragging words before being shot by Robert Ford..."

"But he stresses: 'Anyone who sits down to write a heavy song is a jerk. It's more like paleontology, when you find a bone of a song sticking up and do everything you can to get the rest of it out without breaking it.'" -- Neil Strauss full article

FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM: "David Olney consistently spins spectacular stories in song. David Olney is astounding ... gave one of the most magnificent solo acoustic shows I have seen and that includes concerts by Bruce Springsteen, Guy Clark or anyone else you'd care to name. He can break your heart but he can also chill your spine ... and when the night ended ... we had long since crossed the border that separates the great from the merely very good, the masters from the worthy apprentices. David Olney is as good as it gets. Period." -- Dave Ferman full article