Willie Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel lead list of new music from locals
Early September has brought a bumper crop of high-profile new releases from Austin artists. Here’s a roundup of the hit parade:
Willie Nelson, “My Way” (Legacy). There might be no artist in popular music more prolific than Nelson has been over the past decade or so, with albums regularly coming twice a year, if not more. Lately quite a few of them have been tributes, including the Grammy-winning Gershwins collection “Summertime” and a salute to his late friend Ray Price. “My Way” continues that thread as Willie tackles 11 tunes indelibly associated with Frank Sinatra.
Recorded primarily in Los Angeles (with additional sessions in Austin, Nashville, Tenn., and Brooklyn, N.Y.), “My Way” teams Nelson’s recent right-hand-man producer Buddy Cannon with longtime Lyle Lovett pianist Matt Rollings, who also worked on “Summertime.” Together they create an exquisite, intimate instrumental canvas for Nelson’s vocals to color with his iconically distinctive flair.
At 85, Willie still swings with joy and wonder on the buoyant “A Foggy Day” and the bouncing “Night and Day,” but he’s best on more contemplative numbers: The wisdom of his years inhabits the reflective blue tones of “It Was a Very Good Year” and the romantic bittersweetness of “I’ll Be Around.” Norah Jones joins him for a sweetly swinging duet on “What Is This Thing Called Love,” but mainly this is vintage Willie doing Sinatra in his own way, right down to the dramatic closing title track. Live in Austin: Sept. 29 at Auditorium Shores
Asleep at the Wheel, “New Routes” (Bismeaux/ThirtyTigers). Though they’ve stayed plenty busy the past decade with another Bob Wills tribute album and collaborations with Willie Nelson and the Fort Worth Sym-
phony, this is the first new “normal” Asleep at the Wheel album since 2007’s “Reinventing the Wheel.”
Leader Ray Benson’s backing crew has changed a lot since then, and “New Routes” reflects those changes — primarily the addition of fiddler/singer Katie Shore, who steps out in a big way here. She sings lead on six of the album’s 11 tracks, wrote two of the best ones herself and co-wrote another with Benson. This isn’t entirely surprising, given the high quality of Shore’s 2016 solo album (recorded before she joined the Wheel in 2014), but it does suggest a brave new way forward for the band.
Benson’s still steering the ship, and his lead vocals on three sublime covers — the late Guy Clark’s “Dublin Blues,” Scottish pop star Paolo Nutini’s “Pencil Full of Lead” and the old Moon Mullican hit “Seven Nights to Rock” — reaffirm the Wheel’s role as ace interpreters of a seemingly endless range of material. The album-closing “Willie Got There First” features the star-power cameo of Seth and Scott Avett, but that semi-novelty tribute number ultimately is just a postscript to a set that shows the Wheel still has a wide-open horizon to explore. Live in Austin: Sept. 19 at Waterloo Records, Oct. 5 at Austin City Limits Music Festival
Ghostland Observatory, “See You Later Simulator.” The first release in eight years from the duo of Aaron Behrens and Thomas Ross Turner indicates a rebirth of the band that got big enough to tape “Austin City Limits” a decade ago. (It’s unclear whether this means an end or just a pause to Behrens’ recent Midnight Stroll project.)
In writing about the band for the American-Statesman last month, Deborah Sengupta Stith observed: “The album has throwback vibes from Ghostland’s earlier work, with thumping numbers such as opener ‘Paradise Lost,’ ‘We Understand’ and the title track, drawing on their signature brand of electro-disco mayhem. But there’s a new sentimentality, a deeper emotional core to tracks such as ‘Sometimes’ and the soon-to-be-hit ‘Miss Abyss.’ Live in Austin: Oct. 25 at Stubb’s
Band of Heathens, “A Message From the People Revisited.” Released in 1972, Ray Charles’ “A Message From the People” was an ambitious concept album that noted 1960s civil rights triumphs while still acknowledging America had a long way to go. Austin’s Band of Heathens decided to re-record the album in sequence because of “its moving commentary on social justice, abuse-of-power, and its vision for a stronger, more-unified America,” per the press materials sent out with the record.
It’s also a good fit for the group’s broad-ranging Americana talents, with songs that range from the soulful publicdomain classics “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “America the Beautiful” to Dion’s folk classic “Abraham, Martin and John” and even John Denver’s rambling “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” The band plans to donate proceeds from the record to Rock the Vote, a nonprofit “dedicated to building the political power of young people through pop culture, music, art and technology,” per its website. Live in Austin: Playing the album in full Nov. 25 at Antone’s
Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, “The Difference Between Me and You.” After a four-year hiatus following 2013’s “Electric Slave,” Lewis and his band return with their second record in as many years, following 2017’s “Backlash.” Deep blues grooves permeate the record, from the blazinghot opener “Nothing But a Cliche” to the old-school throwback “Hemmin’ & Hawin’” to the soulful, swinging “Face in the Scene.” An intriguing cover is Lewis’ radical reworking of Wilco’s “Handshake Drugs.”
Cory Morrow, “Whiskey and Pride.” With more than a dozen releases in the past two decades and a solid fan base built upon relentless regional touring, Morrow has long been firmly established as one of the top artists on the Texas roadhouse circuit. “Whiskey and Pride,” produced by Lloyd Maines, continues with what has worked for him all those years, delivering rough-andtumble country-rock leavened with a few sweeter ballads. Of the latter, “Always and Forever” stands out, long a live-show favorite but getting proper studio treatment for the first time with harmonies from Jamie Lin Wilson. Morrow also nods to two of his favorite songwriters with covers of Rodney Crowell’s “Come on Funny Feelin’” and Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Hill Country Rain.” Live in Austin area: Dec. 29 at Buck’s Backyard in Buda
Ray Bonneville, “At King Electric” (Stonefly). The ninth solo album from Canadian transplant Bonneville features 11 original tunes that follow in line with the sharp and smart songwriting path he’s blazed for the past three decades. Recorded in Austin with Justin Douglas at King Electric studio (thus the title), the songs blend elements of blues, folk, country and other Americana accents with the kind of masterful grace that can only be attained through a lifetime of performing and creating music. Keyboardist Richie Lawrence and drummer Andre Bohren provide solid backing throughout, with local luminaries Gurf Morlix and Stefano Intelisano appearing on a couple of songs.