It is amusing to me how many of the best singers in the Texas music scene aren't from Texas. Ray Wylie Hubbard? Oklahoma. Cody Canada? Oklahoma. Ryan Bingham? New Mexico, if I recall correctly. (Granted, in Ray Wylie's case, his parents had the sense to get him to TX around age 3.)
Jason Boland is another Oklahoma singer who has found success in the Texas music scene. I'm guessing that there's not much of a music scene up there. Too busy holding Texas up out of the Gulf of Mexico. (Variant on one of my favorite jokes: Why are all the trees north of Dallas bent? 'Cause Oklahoma sucks.)
I think he actually lives down here now. Cody Canada does; I was a bit surprised a short while ago to find out that he lives in New Braunfels, of all places.
I don't know where Jason Boland lives, but this song is about the county New Braunfels is in. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for that small burg; my brother was actually born there, but we never lived there. (Well, obviously my mother did back in 1970 or so.) Wurstfest is there, and as a German student we went there annually. They'll put any sort of food on a stick at Wurstfest. Pretty cool. Well, it was much prettier than SA & at the time there wasn't much of anything between there & here, so when I was younger I wanted to live there.
Still do, quite often.
When the stereo got stolen out of the truck, the eponymous CD was in it. I was--and am--more pissed off about the theft of the album. I looked into replacing it when we were at Lone Star Music this past week, but they wanted $15.99 for it, & given that I'd paid $9.99 at HEBPlus for the original one, I passed.
Now, this is Jason Boland covering an old Don Williams tune, "Tulsa Time." To the best of my knowledge, this is on the live album "High in the Rockies". I'll let you make your own cannabis jokes here.
For my money, Boland has the best voice in Texas country. Deep & smooth. Definitely A-list material here. He's a damn good songwriter too. Sometimes I wonder who's going to take the place of guys like Hubbard and Robert Earl Keen and such when they retire; so far Boland's at the top of that list.
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A bit of elaboration on what I mentioned this morning...
I am basing this on my personal observations from way back when, so it might not be 100 percent accurate; but from what I remember, the rise of the current Texas/red dirt scene had its roots both in Texas and Oklahoma, with its popularity centered around each state's major universities — A&M, UT, Texas Tech, OU and OSU. Pat Green & Cory Morrow got started playing around Lubbock when they were at Texas Tech, Roger Creager got his start playing around Bryan-College Station when he was at Texas A&M, and Stoney LaRue and Cross Canadian Ragweed got their foothold in the scene in Stillwater, Oklahoma, home of Oklahoma State University. From what I read the Stillwater music scene was already pretty well-established when Ragweed was playing there; it just wasn't as prominent as it is now. I think that's where Jason Boland first played too, though I am not sure. They all eventually started playing in Texas and Oklahoma, as well as the surrounding states. I remember when I saw Ragweed in Lake Charles, Louisiana in late '07, the place was packed.
Pretty cool that Okie Jason Boland sings about Comal County, though. :-) (After hearing "Oklahoma Breakdown" and "Idabel Blues," I was thinking Stoney LaRue was from Oklahoma too; I just found out that he was born in a little town close to Corpus Christi but was raised in Southeast Oklahoma.)
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