Songwriter Daniel has been kicking around country music for years now, his most famous moment coming via shared credits on Pam Tillis’ “All of This Love” and Sherrié Austin’s “I Want To Fall In Love (So Hard It Hurts),” but this solo album, for whatever reason, has some strong and surprising New Orleans flavors in it. His day job is turning scrap lumber into outsider art under the name Bebo, and he takes a similar homespun approach with these 14 (mostly) originals, country-flavored heartland rock with more than a hint of blue-eyed soul. Little surprises keep cropping up, however, like the straight swamp-pop of “Louisiana” or the rolling New Orleans piano on the otherwise generic “Boogie Man.”

Come to think of it, he’s pretty plain when he just rocks out—“Wahoo” is a character study without a character, “Barefoot Boogie” is more or less a rewrite of Hank’s “Move It on Over,” and Daniel gets so lost for clichés in “Baby Don’t You” (“come around here no more”) he winds up repeating a few rhymes. He fares better when sticking to the MOR country stuff like “Blue Looks Good on You,” but in the quieter moments the ’70s singer-songwriter lurking within him comes out, and “Heart Broken,” “Make Me a Blessing” and the title track suggest he may have a real relationship album in him. As it stands now, his musical craftsmanship is more like unfinished furniture than folk art: sturdy and useful to a point, but not really existing “outside” of anything.