Years ago, Stanley Ross came trudging east over prairies and steppes a
confused and anxious post-war laborer, a flat grey sky hanging low
over his head and a guitar clenched in his fist. His back had turned
on the weathered mills and grain elevators of the Great Plains, and
his eyes were focused on the towering industry of Chicago, approaching
slowly and steadily on the horizon.

Stanley Ross had nothing. No…he had songs. Dreary songs. Foggy
Americana pierced by the occasional freight horn, sung by a man who
seemed to be channeling England and Ireland, drinking in a frothy ale
and wolfing down bangers, elbowing up with hard working old men, their
eyes as clouded as the windows of a gilded age saloon.

Stanley Ross walked all the way to the frosted coast of Lake Michigan
with those songs, a disillusioned troubadour, hitting only the notes
that counted until the notes hit back. He fell in love. He walked, he
worked, and he fell in love. And now, on Favorites, all the sweat,
blood, come, and piss that make an American man whatever an American
man may be are laid bare and made fun – the fun of a man in love –
rollicking rockers one imagines a drunken Irishman screaming to his
British lover across the misty Irish Sea while his smiling brothers
sway drunkenly at his side. –Dan Duffy