For those unaware, newly remastered by longtime Bob Seger mastering engineer Robert Vosgien, the Expanded Edition of Face The Promise includes the hit singles Wait for Me and Wreck This Heart. Among the album’s highlights is The Answer’s In The Question, Seger’s duet with Patty Loveless.

Originally released on September 12th, 2006, Face The Promise marked Seger’s 16th studio album. Acclaimed by critics and embraced by fans, it debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and was certified Platinum by the RIAA just three months later.

Twenty years after its release, Face The Promise remains one of the defining statements in Seger’s catalog, reaffirming the songwriting, grit, and heartland spirit that made him one of America’s most enduring rock artists.

Seger is an inductee of both the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The 2015 Billboard Legend of Live honoree’s catalog has earned 13 platinum and 8 multi-platinum RIAA Certified sales awards, including his Diamond-certified Greatest Hits, which remains a perennial bestseller. Seger is Capitol Records’ longest-tenured solo artist in the label’s storied history.

The 20th Anniversary Edition of Bob Seger’s acclaimed 2006 album, Face The Promise, features newly remastered audio, four bonus tracks and is available for the first time on black 2LP vinyl in a gatefold jacket. The release also includes an expanded 12-page booklet containing lyrics, photos and a full 24” front and back cover spread.

Side A:
1. Wreck This Heart
2. Wait For Me
3. Face The Promise
4. No Matter Who You Are

Side B:
1. Are You
2. Simplicity
3. No More
4. Real Mean Bottle (duet with Kid Rock)
5. Won’t Stop

Side C:
1. Between
2. The Answer’s In The Question (duet with Patty Loveless)
3. The Long Goodbye

Side D:
1. Time
2. Little Jane
3. Red Eye To Memphis
4. Let Me Try

Never judge a book by its cover, our grandparents taught us in a spasm of earthy wisdom - whether we listened or not was our own downfall - but if you did back in 2006, you might well have thought that Bob Seger was about to declare himself washed up and done for in the blues-rock entree to this then new album.

Where the younger Seger could claim that things were getting better and better, the grizzled graybeard of Face The Promise finds things decidedly on the downswing, and toys with the idea that he might just wreck this heart of his. But don’t take the old boys crotchety pose too seriously, for even within all his complaining on that opening track, he also concedes that when he gets back home to his lady, everything’ll be all right.

No need to wait any longer than the second track either for Wait For Me is the fallible man’s ode to long-lasting love and his own bootstrap ability to pull himself up to loves measure when the heat is on.

If Seger had caught a touch of the blues, it’s not the poor-me variety but the more robust variant called I’ve paid my dues baby, I’m fed up and I’m-goin’ home variety. If the blues, much like the flu are inevitable, it’s much more dignified to catch the kind Seger’s symptoms suggest he has. So long, Arizona, he says, dissing every small-town repeat of his show when his soul has already made the turn and headed westward towards home.

This is an edgier, older, less accommodating Seger than we’d known before. A bit rockier, a little less ballad-esque, so to speak. But it’s still our Bob in there, belting out the blue-collar convictions about trusting the heart, your good woman, and little else.

Furthermore, he sounds like a man with designs on becoming an elder statesman to the kids who will get knocked about a little as they learn the truths that have come down to him over the year. I mean, just the fourth track alone No Matter Who You Are has a kind of democratic hard knocks creed about it.

I won’t go track-to-track, I’ll let you enjoy them, but it’s quite clear throughout that Seger’s take on the reality he describes is interesting: Don’t take this wrong. Don’t let it bring you down. It’s just the way things work in this great big town. Gentle cynicism is, after all, perhaps not an oxymoron.

Truth is, song after song on this album is shot through with the sentiment that ... this world is out to get you the way it’s gotten me (Between) combined with the kind of poignant statement of loves bereavement that we hear in his gorgeous duet with Patty Loveless, along with the album’s closing track, The Long Goodbye.

In closing, the album reads like a man’s statement of his legacy. I don’t mean to suggest that Seger is anything close to finished singing - although he has been notably quiet since this album came out - moreover, I simply observe that the very fine rock and roll that comes at you track after track on this album congeals into something like a statement we should all take to heart. That’s all.

Bob Seger - “Wait For Me” (Official Music Video)

Official Purchase Link

www.bobseger.com

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