Jason Ringenberg's latest album, Empire Builders, was inspired by his experiences while on the road overseas during 2002 and 2003. As he states in the liner notes, "During that contentious time, I couldn't ride on a subway, train or plane without complete strangers berating me about U.S. foreign policy. There I was, with my cowboy hat and Midwestern/Southern drawl - an open stereotype and an obvious target."

Now, while it's obvious that - as he points out - his appearance made him more of a target than most, and even if he'd resorted to the time-honored dubious tradition of American tourists stitching Canadian flags onto his backpack, it wouldn't have helped — his experience was not entirely unique. Thousands of American tourists have wrestled with this dilemma on a yearly basis since Mark Twain wrote The Innocents Abroad. It can be an earthshattering, overwhelming ordeal, one that tests your boundaries of what patriotism really means, makes you wish that the phrase book had sayings like "I am not personally responsible for my government's foreign policy," and it can also be positive, reducing the world down to a person-by-person basis and give you the chance to break down barriers and interact meaningfully with individuals in other countries. In short, it is a situation that is complex and thoughtful, and one that everyone will react to differently.

Although I am a big fan of Ringenberg's body of work as a whole, I am less excited about Empire Builders. I usually dislike reviews that try to generalize about an artist's motivation, because the reviewer wasn't privy to the creative process. But having said that, this record feels too simplistic to me, given the man's demonstrated intelligence. It seems as though Ringenberg stopped at describing the initial, outward reactions and didn't push through to more thoughtful conclusions.