Dale Watson: Carrying the Torch & Lighting Things Up

While Dale Watson's The Truckin' Sessions Vol. 2 most immediately follows last year's Help Your Lord, the album comes more significantly as a follow up to an album over a decade old 1998's critically acclaimed The Truckin' Sessions. Like that earlier release, The Truckin' Sessions Vol. 2 spins tales of truck driving men to music so two-step ready that the album might as well come with a six-pack of longnecks. Watson's brand of Americana is further progeny of the swing-inspired regional music most readily identified with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, but which also gave us the redneck rockers of Austin's cosmic cowboy past. Watson has placed himself clearly in that tradition, and this most recent release owes a direct debt to the late Waylon Jennings.

Several tracks, most notably "Me and Freddie and Jake" could easily serve as theme music for an as-yet unmade television series about truckers, echoing that catchy '70s scene setter "The Good Ol' Boys" from The Dukes of Hazzard. The nostalgic impulse running through the record, however, doesn't mean that it's a straightforward homage to what once was; Watson and his band are working musicians in the truest sense, and a careful listen will reveal fragments of unexpected rhythm and instrumentation, drawing subtly on influences including not only the aforementioned country classics, but more contemporary musicians and genres as seemingly far removed as funk. The Truckin' Sessions Vol. 2 is recommended listening for anyone with a Johnny Cash t-shirt, a love of honkytonks, or a sense of nostalgia for an era of Austin music they may be just a hair too young to remember: Dale Watson and his Lonestars are carrying the torch, even as they threaten to light the whole place up.

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