Austin Sound

James McMurtry’s newest release “Just Us Kids” is more of what you’d expect from the increasingly acerbic good-ol’-rocker-hippie, which is to say that his latest album is a tightly composed, melancholic ode to the working lonely and an incensed rant against the mendacity-filled pigfucker politicos of the W. Bush administration. The American Dream has croaked and McMurty was there to witness its last raspy breath, next to some train tracks in what could be any has-been American factory town.

McMurtry’s outrage with the nation’s current political path is palpable throughout the album, and nowhere is it more obvious than on the track “Cheney’s Toy,” a searing condemnation of the Boy President and his Iraqi war of adventure. The song opens hauntingly, referencing the unknown emotional casualties of our post-traumatic-stressed troops and continuing to characterize the commander-in-chief as a child searching in all the wrong places for mommy and daddy’s love. The song loses its effect to some extent though in the refrain, where Bush is characterized as, no surprise given the title, “Cheney’s toy.”

Though the Thrift Store Cowboys’ third studio album was released a while ago, I’m just now getting it reviewed - because I refused to take the thing out of my CD player. When the copy of Lay Low While Crawling or Creeping first fell into my hands I slotted it into the first spot in my car’s CD changer. Over the past months, the other nine discs in that cartridge have been rotated dozens of times, and only now have I been able to pull the Lubbock sextet’s release out long enough to review it. The album is that good.

The Gourds have always been a tough band to pin down. Their ninth studio album and first for the Yep Roc label, Noble Creatures, resists pigeon-holing as much as their earlier work, opening as it does with the ska-inflected, horn-accented tune “How Will You Shine?,” an upbeat song that abandons much of the band’s more identifiably bluegrass catalog. Although the Gourds are frequently considered a bluegrass exponent, and not too unreasonably so given the often dominant presence of banjos and mandolins and their often self-consciously twangy lyrics, they are no bluegrass band. Not in any traditional sense, nor in the newgrass sense. To call the Gourds bluegrass elides their experimentation and innovation as musicians - experimentation, I should point out, that pays off with a jackpot on Noble Creatures.

Over the past 10 years, the Drive-By Truckers have defined the new sound of southern rock, building upon the tradition and their own roots while also steering conceptions of the genre into altogether new directions. With their 2001 double-album Southern Rock Opera, loosely themed around the career of Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Truckers shot to national prominence behind Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley’s literate, rural narratives. After several year’s of intense touring and last year’s release of A Blessing and a Curse that have showcased the band’s no-holds-barred, raucous energy, DBT’s current tour changes format to an intimate, seated showcase, with the legendary Spooner Oldham also joining the band. Austin Sound’s Nate Kreuter spoke with the Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood about the Dirt Underneath tour, Jason Isbell’s departure from the band, a couple of new solo albums and an upcoming documentary about DBT. The Drive-By Truckers play two shows next week at Antone’s on Tuesday and Wednesday May 1 and 2.

One of the most refreshing things about local bluegrass favorites Onion Creek Crawdaddies is that they are what they claim to be — a bluegrass band. In an era when a lot of very different music gets passed off as bluegrass — “newgrass” or “Colorado-grass” and jam bands in particular — it’s simply refreshing to hear a band that can compose crisp new tunes with an awareness of and nod towards the genre’s traditional roots.

The band goes for broke on this, its second album. Recorded at Willie’s Pedernales Studio, Irons in the Fire is a showcase of the bandmembers’ own songwriting. The album opens with an old-time number entitled “Dusty Bibles Lead to Dirty Lives,” which represents OCC’s fusion of tradition and originality as well as any other song on the album. The tune is simultaneously nostalgic, evoking both old time religion and music, but with an aural flair of the contemporary, particularly in the vocals, that would characterize Old Crow Medicine Show or the Hackensaw Boys more than a purely traditional bluegrass band.

Guy Clark’s new release Workbench Songs leaves one nagging question: why isn’t this guy more famous? Guy Clark is an Austin institution, but with only a small following nationwide. He doesn’t pack stadiums or even sell out pubs, most nights. Hell, you can catch him almost any week as a regular early evening performer at the Continental Club. But Clark writes and plays in the finest country traditions, rivaling the likes of Billy Joe Shaver and Ray Wylie Hubbard for honest tunes that capture a moment of happiness, pain, fear, sadness or wry humor, but without the patronizing tone common in mainstream country and less authentically alternative country songwriters.

Only a fool would claim to have Kinky Friedman figured out. The self-proclaimed Jewish Cowboy has spent the past two years whoring for every column-inch of newspaper and sound-byte of television he can get in his effort to rescue the Texas governor’s mansion from the once seemingly endless depredations of pig-fucking Republicans and a few hairy-palmed Democrats. His campaign thus far has created as many questions as it has answered, but Friedman is a galactic improvement on Rick Perry, whose handlers should have replaced his batteries before the campaign season, and whoever the equally forgettable Democratic nominee is.

The Kinkster, as he’s affectionately known by musical, literary, political and sexual supporters (I’m told), began his campaign with the equivalent of a poorly disguised 99-yard quarterback sneak. There haven’t been any other plays, but now that he’s made the first 90 yards, a lot of people are cheering him into the end zone. Just to see what happens, if for no other reason. The progressive country star, prolific scribbler and political propagandist may be Texas’s most media savvy prodigal son. So, it’s no surprise that his ongoing and increasingly realistic bid for governor of Tejas coincides with a blitz of media coverage, new books and, fortunately for us, the release of The Last of the Jewish Cowboys: The Best of Kinky Friedman.