Will Johnson’s ninth solo album, No Ordinary Crown, hums with palpable motion. Travelers, runners and conductors fill its lyrics, and gesticulating storms and emotional highs and lows seep through the instinctual quality of its rock ’n roll performances. It’s also cabled by ephemeral momentum.

The songs were conceived in stolen moments and brief windows of time between the responsibilities of family and a multi-hyphenate career. The singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, painter and novelist describes the demo process as “fairly jagged,” a gathering and stitching of audio snippets recorded via cell phone and dictaphone over a year and half. “I finalized the songson short tours where I could hear my thoughts a bitmore clearly,” he says.

Bluegrass is a brand new studio album that captures a dozen classic Willie Nelson compositions--including "On the Road Again," "Yesterday's Wine," "Still is Still Moving to Me," "Good Hearted Woman" and more--freshly interpreted by Willie and an ensemble of crack players. In a seven decade career that has seen him explore genres from one end of the musical spectrum to the other, this is his first full album dedicated to genre. Willie and longtime producer Buddy Cannon, picked personal and fan favorite compositions from across his career to perform anew for this salute to the Appalachian old-time string band music which profoundly influenced Willie's songwriting sensibilities and the direction of American country music in general. Using his own catalog as source material, Willie chose songs combining the kind of strong melodies, memorable storylines and tight ensemble-interplay found in traditional bluegrass interpretations of the roots of American folk songs. With Bluegrass, Willie uncovers new truths in his own songs.

The moment the needle drops on Bite, the new A Giant Dog record, one’s conception of what an A Giant Dog record sounds like bends like space and time around a starship running at lightspeed. The biggest point of departure is that Bite is a concept album, concerning characters who find themselves moving in and out of a virtual reality called Avalonia.

A Giant Dog’s first album of original songs since 2017’s Toy, Bite finds the band—Sabrina Ellis, Andrew Cashen, Danny Blanchard, Graham Low, and Andy Bauer—at their peak as musicians, challenging themselves with more complex arrangements and subject matter that forced them out of their heads and into those of the characters who occupy this supposed paradise. “We had to find ourselves within, or project ourselves into, the principal characters. We developed them, got to know their minds, emotions, and motivations, and then expressed those in nine songs,” Ellis explains.

Themes of addiction, gender fluidity, living ethically in a capitalist society, physical autonomy, avarice, grief, and consent bubble beneath the promised happiness of Avalonia. This is evident in songs like “Different Than,” where Ellis sings, “My body can’t explain the things my mind don’t comprehend” as if societal gender pressure is squeezing its protagonist out of their skin.

The songs on Bite are full of bombast, at turns calling to mind the spacefaring operatic rock of Electric Light Orchestra and the high drama of an Ennio Morricone film score. The album’s narrative sweep is epic in scope, its characters facing impossible odds and certain doom, existing as comfortably with the sci-fi grandiosity of Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak as it does with the high fantasy of Dio and Iron Maiden.

Appropriately, A Giant Dog came to this narrative armed to the teeth with new ideas, unleashing synthesizers and string sections to create what Ellis describes as orchestral, symphonic, futuristic punk. To achieve this, they left their home turf of Austin, Texas, for La Cuve Studio, just outside of Angers, France. Living in the French countryside, A Giant Dog laid down their vision of the future against a decidedly pastoral back-drop. On walks from Angers to La Cuve, Ellis says that they “would see many things, and also nothing at all. Swans on the river. Romani people living in little trailers, with a side hut built for their dog. A juggler on a unicycle—not fucking with you.” “We thought we wouldn’t be allowed back in France after this trip, to be honest,” they continued. “Five loud, stomping, clapping, rowdy Americans who ran through the
streets of Angers for three weeks in November 2022.”

The experience capped two years of planning and writing, fleshing out the universe of Avalonia beyond the bounds of most concept albums. The resulting nine songs do not merely occupy this space: They’ve lived in it, and they want out.

Rejected Unknown is a 2001 album released by the acclaimed musician, Daniel Johnston. This is the first time the record has been pressed to vinyl in over 20 years.

"The main themes on Rejected Unknown are the themes Johnston has explored throughout much of his career: hopeless longing, unrequited love, and as might be gathered from the album's title, fear of rejection. This fear probably took on very real terms for Johnston as he was finally dropped from Atlantic Records after being held for years in contractual limbo. Rejected Unknown is unmistakably Johnston's album; he sings and plays piano and guitar, and even adds some percussion to the oddly quirky pop songs."

It's only fitting that Khruangbin’s first-ever official live releases would be albums paired with their tourmates: artists whose music they love and admire, friends who’ve become family along the way. Khruangbin’s series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited-edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Most of all, this series ignites both sides of the band’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances.

‘Live at Radio City Music Hall’ features performances by Nubya Garcia and Khruangbin.

It's only fitting that Khruangbin’s first-ever official live releases would be albums paired with their tourmates: artists whose music they love and admire, friends who’ve become family along the way. Khruangbin’s series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited-edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Most of all, this series ignites both sides of the band’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances.‘Live at Stubbs’ features performances by Kelly Doyle, Ruben Moreno, The Suffers and Robert Ellis and Khruangbin.

After more than a decade of non-stop touring, acclaimed Austin songwriting duo, Kelsey Wilson and Alexander Beggins, quietly stopped touring as Wild Child. Headed in different sonic directions, the pair didn't know if they would ever make another Wild Child record. Then, what felt like the "end of the world" brought them back together. Pandemic lockdowns closed stages and drained bank accounts. As artists from all backgrounds took their shows to the internet, Wild Child was no different. Wilson and Beggins got together to practice for a series of online performances for devout fans, and within 30 minutes they wrote the first single for what would accidentally become Wild Child's fifth album, End of the World.

Mixed by Matt Pence (Jason Isbell, Elle King) and including contributions from guitarist Charlie Wiles (Paul Cauthen, John Moreland, Orville Peck), End of The World sees the pair find catharsis in art amid compound disasters. As Wilson describes it, “I just started signing about things that were freaking me out. Wearing a mask for a year. Global warming. There's no heat, no water. It was like a dirge to begin with. But by the end we were all screaming and laughing that, yes, this might be the end of the world, but we're all together right now, making music in my living room by candlelight. It's all OK."

Take a look at the cover of Rodney Crowell’s brilliant new album, The Chicago Sessions, and you might recognize a familiar callback to the legendary songwriter’s 1978 debut.

“In a lot of ways, this album feels like that very first record to me,” Crowell reflects. “When my daughter Chelsea suggested we lay the artwork out similarly, the connection made perfect sense. There’s something very simple, very innocent about it. It’s just me and the band in a room together, loose and live and having fun.”

Produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, The Chicago Sessions is indeed a throwback to Crowell’s early days of making records, but it’s no nostalgia trip. The songs here are vital and timely, touching on everything from love and mortality to race and religion, and the performances are nothing short of intoxicating, fueled by raw guitars, honky-tonk piano, and tight, punchy drums. Tweedy wields a light touch as a producer, his influence subtle yet unmistakable, and engineer Tom Schick’s mixes are dynamic and alive, alternately lush and spacious in all the right places with a spotlight fixed firmly on Crowell’s warm, weathered vocals throughout. Put it all together and you’ve got a masterful, cross-generational collaboration that manages to feel both fresh and familiar all at once, an incisive, engaging collection that balances careful craftsmanship with joyful liberation at every turn.

Indie Exclusive * First repress since the original in 2001. Copies on Discogs sell for well over $100. Weird Revolution is the eighth studio album by the band, released on Surfdog Records and Hollywood Records. It is in large part a rerecorded version of an earlier album, tentatively entitled After the Astronaut, that was abandoned in 1998. The Surfers teeter on the brink of conventional rock values. However, throughout the album, singer Gibby Haynes drives the proverbial truck into the ditch with rambling psychotic speeches.

- The Western Chill collector's edition is a specially designed box containing multiple pieces for the ultimate Robert Earl Keen fan.

- Contains a double sleeve album (14 songs total), a graphic novel that tells the tale of how Western Chill was written, a full music video DVD of all the songs that are on the LPs and a songbook with lyrics, notes and chords so the purchaser can play along.

- All four items are artfully packaged together in a 13.5 x13.5 box with magnetic closure.

A Rothko-esque color field set to music, The Window Is The Dream ventures even deeper into Horn’s inner space than her stark, acclaimed debut Optimism, which earned her an ‘artist to watch’ tag from The Guardian upon its release last year. For her second record, Horn travelled to upstate New York to record with a few musical touchstones in mind: the electro-primitivism of the Silver Apples, austere rhythm kings This Heat and The Raincoats’ time-bending Odyshape, however the resulting 10 songs are an entry into a world which is very much her own.

Songs of Pain is the first album by folk singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston, recorded on a simple tape recorder and released on Compact Cassette. This is the album's first time being pressed on vinyl. 

Prolonging the Magic, CAKE’s third studio album, is being released for the first time on 180 gram black vinyl. Remastered audio of the 13-track album includes “Never There,” “Let Me Go” and “Sheep Go To Heaven”.

Amongst the nearly 150 albums that Willie Nelson has released, he has a number of amazing full-album tributes to songwriters from Kris Kristofferson and George Gershwin to Ray Price and Cindy Walker. Adding to that list is a new studio album dedicated to songwriting legend Harlen Howard who has scores of country hits including a number that crossed over to pop and even R&B charts. A member of both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall Of Fame, Howard wrote hits for Ray Charles (“Busted”), Buck Owens (“I’ve Got A Tiger By The Tail”), Conway Twitty (the title track), Bobby Bare (“The Streets Of Baltimore”) and so many more. Produced by longtime collaborator Buddy Cannon and featuring a murderers’ row of crack Nashville musicians, I Don’t Know A Thing About Love is an amazing addition to Willie’s unparalleled catalog.

Truly great pop songs do not require a cheery outlook in order to work, nor do they pander to expectations of syrupy sweet easy-listening. Rather, the best pop music is a matter of refinement and pure intention, of dialing groove to melody so that the two might puncture the malaise of everyday living in unison, revealing some brief, sober truth about our shared human condition. On their third LP, Moments of Clarity (Run for Cover), Narrow Head have achieved precisely this feat. Traversing the depths of massive, churning riffs, often distorted to the point of violence, bouncing, lock-grooved rhythms, and crystalline, gorgeously constructed hooks, the Houston-based outfit puts on a masterclass in the art of writing songs that match the pain, pleasure, and confusion of modern living. Each track is sentimental without being precious, heavy without unnecessary griminess, pop-forward without letting the listener off the hook easy: these songs ask for some form of hurt or desire to be paid back to them in return, some promise that the listener is putting equal skin put into the game.

Moments of Clarity reflects this matured sense of purpose. Longtime Narrow Head fans will undoubtedly still recognize the band’s signature marriage of brutality and grace, and many of the core themes of desolation, loss, and self-medication that the band established on their prior records Satisfaction (2016, re-issued by Run for Cover in 2021) and 12th House Rock (2020, Run for Cover) continue to haunt the edges of Moments of Clarity. All the same, Moment of Clarity rises above the darkness with a sense of elegant repose, like a butterfly-winged figure-skater skimming the hardened rim of a freezing black lake. While not exactly optimistic in outlook, these songs simmer with a certain life affirming desire, a burning passion to transcend pure cynicism and self-destruction, if only for even a few seconds.

When the world came to a halt, Jim Ward couldn’t stop moving. He’d just released a reunion album, Trust the River, as the frontman of Sparta when the pandemic hit, and as tour dates dried up, Ward returned to the studio. A year later, he debuted his raucous solo record Daggers and now he’s offering up yet another Sparta album to the world. 

The resulting collection of songs were entirely written on keys in what Ward considers an effort to stretch musical muscles he wouldn’t otherwise have had the expanse of time to indulge in. Boldly self-titled some 20-odd years into Sparta’s career, the album serves as a kind of reintroduction to the band, what Ward calls “a fresh slate.” 

He recorded the song at Red Bull Studios in Santa Monica, where for the first time in his long career, Ward had a state of the art recording space to himself, and an engineer able to help him enact his vision. The rest of the album was self-produced at Ward’s El Paso studio, Crowded Heart. 

Evolution of Joy is a remake of her 2019 album, Joy. The new version recreates her live sound, swapping sparse original mixes with vibrant arrangements featuring a full band.

Magnetically energetic and eternally hopeful, Dayglow (the project of Austin, TX based Sloan Struble) excels in creating catchy, carefully crafted, effervescent indie pop. His home-recorded 2018 debut album Fuzzybrain featured the Platinum Certified single “Can I Call You Tonight?”, which went on to be hailed as 2020’s biggest independent alternative hit. Following up with his sophomore album Harmony House in 2021, Dayglow generated a mountain of indie buzz and critical acclaim anchored by lead single "Close To You". Now, after racking up over a billion streams and selling out headline tours around the world, Dayglow returns with his third album People In Motion. Fun and colorful, People In Motion meditates on the ideas of commitment, inner peace, and movement, while inviting the listener to the dance floor to leave the chaos and noise of our current culture behind.

10th anniversary edition of The Sword's fourth studio album produced by J. Robbins and featuring the songs "The Veil of Isis," “Cloak of Feathers,” "Arcane Montane" and "The Hidden Masters." Pressed on 180-gram Cosmic-Yellow Swirl Vinyl. Described by Consequence as “heavy metal distilled to its purest form.”

Jaguar Sound is the second solo album of 2022 from Adrian Quesada and with it the Black Pumas co-founder showcases another impressive side of his artistry with 12 head-nodding, cinematic instrumentals landing somewhere between Khruangbin, Lee Hazlewood and The Alchemist. Recorded at Quesada's own Electric Deluxe Studio across 2020, Jaguar Sound proves that he is one of the most exciting stylists in modern independent music.

Billy Joe Shaver’s songs were stories of his life; they were real, and they were raw. Many artists have covered Billy Joe songs over the years. From Willie to Waylon to Elvis and Cash. Billy Joe’s influence on some of the greatest of artists is what inspired this project. Now, with Live Forever: A Tribute to Billy Joe Shaver a whole new batch of artists and songwriters are taking their cut at one of the greatest songwriting catalogs of all time. This album is a testament to Billy Joe’s words and the deep impact they had on so many wonderful songwriters and performers. He’s a hero to so many, and New West is honored to pay homage to the legacy of Billy Joe Shaver. Just like the songs he left behind him, he’s gonna live forever now.

Never-before-released children's album by Texas country/roots/rock-n-roll icon Joe Ely. The album has been in production since 1984 and is being released for the first time EVER.

Joe Ely has released a whole lotta records over the last 50 years, but not even half as many albums as he’s made. But happily for fans the world over, ever since 2007, Ely’s made a concerted effort to release a steady stream of pearls from that vault on his own Rack ’Em Records label. And this October, the same month as Ely’s induction into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame, he’s finally sharing what might well be the mother of them all: Flatland Lullaby.

Now, to clarify, Flatland Lullaby is not necessarily what anyone, least of all Ely himself, would ever call a “big" record. So go ahead and exhale if for a moment there you were thinking it was going to be, say, some kind of previously never-even-heard-about, full-on collaboration with the Clash, or even another treasure chest full of long-lost Flatlanders gold along the lines of 2012’s The Odessa Tapes. That said, though, Flatland Lullaby really is a gift objectively more special by far than anything else released from Ely’s archives to date, because this one comes straight off the very top shelf of the family reserve. It’s the kind of passion project that could have only ever come into focus when the initial target audience extended no farther than the man’s nearest and dearest — namely, his daughter Marie.

“It’s basically a little lullaby album that I did for her when she was 2 or 3 years old,” says Ely. He started recording it in his Austin home studio in 1984 and gave it to his toddler the following Christmas, with no real thought at the time, or for years thereafter, really, of ever releasing it to the public. Or at least not the whole public. “All of the neighbors’ kids would borrow it,” he recalls with a laugh, “and we’ve kind of passed it around to different friends over the years, too, anytime they were bringing a new child into the world and wanted some songs to play, or when their kids were having kids.”

But of course, Ely would invariably hear back from a lot of those folks that it wasn’t just kids who really enjoyed the record, and little Marie (yes, the baby girl whose picture is now framed on the cover) never outgrew it, either, and not just for purely sentimental reasons. It was Marie, now an established photographer, filmmaker, and visual artist, who perhaps more than anyone has encouraged her father for years to share it with the world, knowing as well as he always has that it was never just a fun little album made for a child not yet old enough to talk. In fact, out of all the records that Ely has ever made, released or not, Flatland Lullaby may well be the one that’s tickled and sung to his muse on and off again the longest.

From the beautiful to the jarring, intrepid explorer Callahan charts a passage through all kinds of territory, pitting dreams of dreams against dreams of reality. When he makes it back to us, his old friends 'n acquaintances, we are reminded how much of a world it can be out there - and in here as well, where we live everyday.

Available on CD / Cassette / LP

After nine critically acclaimed albums, twenty bandmates, countless bars, clubs, theaters and festivals, after two full decades, Will Sheff is letting Okkervil River drift out to sea with the release of Nothing Special, his debut collection under his own name. Nothing Special was recorded with a mix of old friends (like Benjamin Lazar-Davis and Will Graefe) and new collaborators (Christian Lee Hutson, Cassandra Jenkins, Dawes drummer Griffin Goldsmith, and Death Cab For Cutie pianist Zac Rae).

Magnetically energetic and eternally hopeful, Dayglow (the project of Austin, TX based Sloan Struble) excels in creating catchy, carefully crafted, effervescent indie pop. His home-recorded 2018 debut album Fuzzybrain featured the Platinum Certified single “Can I Call You Tonight?”, which went on to be hailed as 2020’s biggest independent alternative hit. Following up with his sophomore album Harmony House in 2021, Dayglow generated a mountain of indie buzz and critical acclaim anchored by lead single "Close To You". Now, after racking up over a billion streams and selling out headline tours around the world, Dayglow returns with his third album People In Motion. Fun and colorful, People In Motion meditates on the ideas of commitment, inner peace, and movement, while inviting the listener to the dance floor to leave the chaos and noise of our current culture behind.

The best music reflects a wide-screen view of the world back at us, helping distill the universal into something far more personal. Since forming in Austin in 2004, The Black Angels have become standard-bearers for modern psych-rock that does exactly that, which is one of many reasons why the group’s new album, Wilderness of Mirrors, feels so aptly named.

Indeed, in the five years since the release of the band’s prior album, Death Song, and the two-plus years spent working on Wilderness of Mirrors, pandemics, political tumult and the ongoing devastation of the environment have provided ample fodder for the Black Angels’ signature sonic approach. If the group’s members were terrified as they honed new music heading into an election year, they realized they didn’t even know how scary things could still get.

So, they looked inward, focusing on both their ongoing creative and musical development as well as their own struggles amid the external chaos. Wilderness of Mirrors hits even more close to home, as the group recorded solely in the friendly confines of Austin for the first time in more than a decade and entrusted co-production duties to its longtime front-of-house engineer, Brett Orrison.

The latest full-length from Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller, ‘The Misfit’, exists in an enchanted dimension all its own. With its elegant blurring of psychedelia, dream-pop & electronic-leaning indie-rock, the Texas-bred singer-songwriter’s 9th solo effort emerged from a charmed collaboration with Hudson Valley neighbor Sam Cohen (Danger Mouse, Kevin Morby). Miller grounds each track with the vulnerable songwriting and unaffected vocal presence he’s brought to the Old 97’s for the last 3 decades.

The Deer have built a devoted audience for their uninhibited, cosmic indie folk the old-fashioned way: playing their hearts out, night after night. In addition to extensive headlining, they’ve shared stages with the likes of Big Thief and The Head and The Heart. Their label debut Do No Harm, released in 2019, marked a set of career breakthroughs, topping the KUTX chart and earning a nomination for the Austin Music Awards’ Album of the Year. When live music took global pause, The Deer had momentum to sort.

The five musicians took the energy reserved for tour and brought it into the studio, a pressure cooker not only for creativity but newly, for existential reflection. The result is two full albums, the first of which, The Beautiful Undead, will be released September 9, 2022, on tastemaking indie Keeled Scales. It’s an uninhibited collection of cosmic indie-folk reflecting upon what it means to lose your sense of purpose. The Deer, amidst turbulent assessment, transformed a paralyzing void into an empowering surrender of ego—a rollicking submission to the immense unpredictability of existing. It's a free-spirited album fueled by hard-earned revelation.

The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, the planet is getting warmer, and human extinction looms likely. The Deer handle their devastated call for change with an artful subtlety, an infectious sense of play, and a projection of internal learning onto the external world. Their genius is in creating palpable, emotional urgency not with boisterousness, but fact. Throughout The Beautiful Undead, The Deer radiate an intensity fit for the times, but not at the cost of dancing.

"Heartless Bastards’ career-defining album Arrow turned 10 this year, and Partisan is celebrating by re-releasing the LP on black and gold galaxy vinyl. This special edition release will be limited to 2000 copies that have been numbered in gold foil.

Produced by Jim Eno from Spoon, Arrow features Erika Wennerstrom on guitar and vocals, Dave Colvin on drums, Jesse Ebaugh on bass, and Mark Nathan on guitar. This album showcases a band at the height of their powers. They are synthesizing the best of bar rock, Alt-country, classic rock, and the blues into something vital, unfiltered and all their own. The seamless sound achieved on Arrow was the result of 2 years of nearly non-stop touring; on the road the band developed an astonishing musical telepathy, with all four players intuitively able to craft Wennerstrom’s songs into maximum form."

Shearwater’s seventh studio album, produced by the band and Dan Duszynski (Loma), shows us where its wandering frontman has been. While the thundering songs of the band’s 2016 LP Jet Plane and Oxbow(Sub Pop) were filled with fears for what the United States was becoming under the previous presidential administration, Meiburg resolved to find a new approach for The Great Awakening. “I felt hopeless,” he admits. “And I didn’t want to make hopeless music.“ 

The resultant 11-track album—anchored by Meiburg’s closely-recorded voice, more otherworldly and urgent than ever—is one that Shearwater’s been striving toward for years: a journey into the unknown, embracing sorrow and joy, beauty and terror.

The Great Awakening is a soulful and immersive travelogue of grand atmospheres and intimate landscapes, decorated with field recordings from Meiburg’s journey while writing his critically acclaimed debut book, A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey, released in March 2021 by Knopf.

Shearwater’s seventh studio album, produced by the band and Dan Duszynski (Loma), shows us where its wandering frontman has been. While the thundering songs of the band’s 2016 LP Jet Plane and Oxbow(Sub Pop) were filled with fears for what the United States was becoming under the previous presidential administration, Meiburg resolved to find a new approach for The Great Awakening. “I felt hopeless,” he admits. “And I didn’t want to make hopeless music.“ 

The resultant 11-track album—anchored by Meiburg’s closely-recorded voice, more otherworldly and urgent than ever—is one that Shearwater’s been striving toward for years: a journey into the unknown, embracing sorrow and joy, beauty and terror.

The Great Awakening is a soulful and immersive travelogue of grand atmospheres and intimate landscapes, decorated with field recordings from Meiburg’s journey while writing his critically acclaimed debut book, A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey, released in March 2021 by Knopf.

Four-time Grammy® Award winner Delbert McClinton celebrates his coming-of-age musical heroes and influences with his 27th studio album, Outdated Emotion (Hot Shot Records/Thirty Tigers), coming on May 13, 2022.  The 16-track collection features Hank Williams, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, and Little Richard standards, as well as five original songs written or co-written by McClinton.

Delbert has spent much of the COVID isolation in Kevin McKendree’s Rock House Studio in Nashville.  This new album brings his music back to where it started. Outdated Emotion pays homage to McClinton’s earliest influences, Hank Williams and Jimmy Reed with a salute to Ray Charles and Little Richard, as well as five of his own compositions, influenced by the sounds of his heroes.  Along with Kevin and his son, musical prodigy Yates McKendree, Delbert has created the album he has often dreamed of.

“I’ve always wanted to do an album of the songs that influenced me the most. Hank Williams songs, Jimmy Reed songs, and songs that I love. And this was the perfect time to do it. It’s important music from another time. It’s music that people need to hear again, or for the first time. Nobody knows about them. Or has forgotten about them. Or was never turned on to them. There is a whole generation, maybe two generations now, who don’t know this music. My whole idea here was to show them how it was and how we got here.  Hank Williams, Jimmy Reed, Lloyd Price, Ray Charles. These songs take me to my youth. They are good if not better now than they were then, and they were great then. They are songs people should just get to hear.”

Rolling Stone calls Delbert McClinton the “Godfather of Americana Music.” In a career that has spanned more than six decades, his honkytonk blues sound and signature smooth voice have provided a soundtrack for American music history. He is a four-time Grammy winner (Traditional Blues Album in 2020 for Tall, Dark, and Handsome; Contemporary Blues Album in 2006 for Cost of Living and 2002 for Nothing Personal; and Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1992 for "Good Man, Good Woman"), and received the Americana Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Growing up in Lubbock and Fort Worth, Texas allowed Delbert McClinton an early appreciation for the best of 20th century American music, with the songs of postwar America, honkytonk country, and southern blues.  Delbert remembers where he was when he heard his first Hank Williams song. And he knew he wanted to play music for a living when he first heard Jimmy Reed.  Leading the house band in the desegregated roadhouses on the outskirts of Fort Worth, Delbert backed Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and other blues legends, while making a name for himself as a regional player in the birth of rock and roll, opening shows for Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and other pioneers of the new sound; and even headlining shows in Great Britain with Bruce Channel (“Hey Baby”), with a little-known Liverpool quartet. The Beatles as the opening act.  In the early 1970s, as his “Two More Bottles of Wine” reflects, Delbert “went out west with a burning desire to set the west coast on fire….” He teamed up with Glen Clark for the Delbert and Glen sessions (Clean Records) and released two critically acclaimed albums before returning to Texas as the progressive country/blues awakening movement was starting to happen in Austin. Hippies and cowboys crowded together on sawdust dance floors watching history in the making as Delbert, Doug Sahm, Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Freda and the Firedogs and Asleep at the Wheel set the stage for a new sound coming out of Texas. There, Delbert began to develop his signature sound, mixed rocking blues and hardcore country to create the unique style that has served him well through the last half century.
Further solidifying his sound, Delbert went into the famed Muscle Shoals, Alabama studio and called on the Muscle Shoals Horns, who had recorded with everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Elton John. They joined his longtime band to create his next album. That signature horn sound has remained a mainstay in Delbert’s music.
 
When Texas became the rage in New York City, a music venue called the Lone Star Café served as capital of Texas chic. Austin musician Cleve Hatttersley was the manager of the Lone Star.   He said, “Everyone who was anyone came through the door on any given night: Mick Jagger, Johnny Paycheck, Tommy Tune. Jerry Garcia… and Delbert was the biggest star of the bunch. Delbert is the absolute heart and soul of Texas rhythm and blues. We had James Brown, George Strait, Elvis Costello… but the one that all the other stars came out to see was Delbert.” Delbert had succeeded in creating his own genre, a melting pot of American music, and people still cannot get enough of it. From those early days in Fort Worth roadhouses until the recent COVID crisis shut down touring shows Delbert and his band have crossed the country playing festivals, theatres, and iconic music institutions. From Farm Aid to Carnegie Hall, his popularity grew, and Delbert continues as a “musician’s musician,” influencing many artists along the way.  Delbert released Tall, Dark & Handsome, (Hot Shot Records/Thirty Tigers) in 2019, to celebrate his 79th birthday. The album earned Delbert his fourth Grammy® for Best Traditional Blues Album. He also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association, and has been featured several times in the Country Music Hall of Fame’s series of live performances, programs and podcasts.
 
In May of 2021, Delbert announced his retirement from touring. Fans and music journalists speculated about what he would do next. This was to be the first time in 64 years that he was not traveling interstate highways and backroads, playing a rigorous schedule.  Outdated Emotion brings Delbert McClinton full circle to the songs that started it all.  

Lyle Lovett returns with his first new album in over 10 years,“12th of June”, due out on Verve Records May 13th, 2022. The album is a fantastic and eclectic collection of new original songs and beloved interpretations that will please existing fans as well as invite new ones. Immaculately recorded, it highlights the dynamics of Lyle and his Large Band– and their singular ability to shift from one genre to the next with uncanny grace and ability.  From beautiful acoustic ballads to swinging big band numbers, this record will remind listeners why Lyle is national musical treasure.

Willie is back with his 72^ND solo studio album. A full-fledged album of new studio material produced with long-time collaborator Buddy Cannon, it will come on Willie’s 89^th birthday and shows off just how prolific he continues to be as the album includes some of his finest songwriting and performances in years! The 14 tracks include 5 amazing new Willie Nelson/Buddy Cannon compositions, new songs from Chris Stapleton & Rodney Crowell (the first single “I’ll Love You Till The End Of Time”) and a cadre of top Nashville songwriters, plus a couple of plum covers by Leonard Cohen (“Tower Of Song”) and The Beatles (“With A Little Help From My Friends”) given expert interpretation by Willie.

Collector's edition of the classic 'Hi, How Are You' album, featuring unreleased sonic surprises on side B. 

Rogue. Poet. Rocker. Texas Texture. Ray Wylie Hubbard made such a mark with Co-Starring, his first major label outing with an all-star lineup of his vast network of friends, the always shape-shifting songwriter decided once was not enough. So the louche beacon of cool went even wider and deeper into his coterie of confidantes, emerging with Co-Starring Too. The second set features a surprisingly eclectic and Texas-centric collection - Willie Nelson, The Bluebonnets, Band of Heathens, The Last Bandoleros and Steve Earle, plus a Red Dirt collab with Wade Bowen, Randy Rogers and Cross Canadian Ragweed's Cody Canada. The next wave of Lone Star songwriting icons Hayes Carll, James McMurtry, Dalton Domino appear next to tracks from creative torque Wynonna, Jaimee Harris, Charlie Sexton and Gurf Morlix. The far-reaching rock & roll/country music/musicians/Texas Music Hall of Fame team of Ringo Starr, Lucas Hubbard, Steve Lukather (Toto), Eliza Gilkyson and Ann Wilson (Heart) assemble alongside metal slayers Lzzy Hale and John 5 with an amplified Blues-fusion from Kevin Russell and the Shiny Soul Sisters. Always eviscerating songwriting, Co-Starring Too is a post-outlaw country take on what it means to be a man holding his own, a rake unafraid of a good time and a romantic wildly committed to the ideals of the heart. Unabashed and unafraid to work from the fringes, bringing the rest of us along for the ride, there is only one Ray Wylie Hubbard.

GUEST ARTISTS:

Willie Nelson, Kevin Russell and the Shiny Soul Sisters, The Bluebonnets, Steve Earle, Lzzy Hale, John 5, Hayes Carll, James McMurty, Dalton Domino, The Last Bandoleros, Wade Bowen, Randy Rogers, Cody Canada, Wynonna Judd, Jaimee Harris, Charlie Sexton, Gurf Morlix, Ringo Starr, Lucas Hubbard, Steve Lukather, Eliza Gilkyson, Ann Wilson & The Band of Heathens.

• Collaboration Album On Translucent Green Vinyl!
• Features Ringo Starr, Willie Nelson, Steve Earle & More!

RAY HUBBARD / CO-STARRING TOO / CO-STARRING TOO

Loss and hope, isolation and communion, the cessation and renewal of purpose. These themes echo throughout the fifth album from Midlake, their first since "Antiphon" (2013). Reuniting with intense focus after a long hiatus, the result is "For the Sake of Bethel Woods" - an album with tremendous thematic and sonic reach, produced to layered, loving perfection by John Congleton. It’s a record full of immersive warmth and mystery from a band of ardent seekers, one of our generation’s finest.

Coming February 11th: Spoon's tenth album, Lucifer on the Sofa, is alive, vital and inarguably the band's heaviest work to date. The first set of songs that the quintet has put to tape in its hometown, Austin, in more than a decade. Written and recorded over the last two years ' both in and out of shutdown ' these songs feel like a culmination of Spoon's career while marking a shift toward something louder, wilder, and more vivid.

Optimism is the debut album from Jana Horn of Austin, Texas. Originally self-released in a small vinyl edition, now widely available. Horn says the LP, "seemed to come about indirectly, almost in passing, a feeling of being in-between things. I was really mobile at that time, living wherever... I had just discovered, late, Raymond Carver, Broadcast, Sybil Baier, Annette Peacock, Richard & Linda Thompson, a short story called “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” by Denis Johnson. I had “Heart Needs a Home” in mind, “The Great Valerio;” I was just really moving through the world, hanging in the shadows of the people I wanted to be. Hoping, looking out, this is Optimism. I was looking for anything."

“Wild” is drawn from Spoon’s forthcoming full-length, Lucifer on the Sofa. The song captures the band at its most visceral and vivid, with rough edges intact and a guitar solo perfectly slotted into the middle eight. This 7” single version comes backed with an alternate mix by British reggae innovator Dennis Bovell and is limited to 3,000 copies worldwide. 

"Wild"/"Wild Remix"