Search - Various Artists :: Austin Country Nights

(Amazon's track listing tells you the songwriters rather than the artists!). This collection of tracks by veterans of the Austin club scene could make a lot of Yankees want to hop a plane to the Texas capitol. All tracks were recorded especially for this album, and far from being a throwaway like many such projects, this is a solid album-of-the-year candidate. The (relatively) known quantities present are Dale Watson, Don Walser, Ted Roddy, and The Wagoneers (reformed just for the occasion), and they each turn in a solid track.

But even better are some whose music has never crossed Texas borders. Roy Heinrich's "A Face In The Crowd" and Cornell Hurd Band's "I Cry, Then I Drink, Then I Cry" are honky-tonk classics. Bruce Robison (with Kelly Willis on harmony vocals) turns in a gem with "Poor Man's Son," and his brother Charlie ends the vocal portion of the album with a very strange, but endearing, track, "Sunset Boulevard." There isn't a bad cut in the lot, and if it's the closest you're going to get to Austin, get it quick. NOTE: Some of the artists have subsequently released a different version of their track on one of their own albums.