Wonderfully ambitious third album from Austin honky-tonker.
Chasen Wayne is not a musician to do anything by halves. After releasing two well-received albums, his third is a bold and distinct mélange of country, psychedelia, surf punk, jazz, and everything in between. Wayne’s background is a fascinating one and dictates everything about this set of seventeen songs. His early years were spent in a trailer park; then, as a teenager, he left home and moved to Austin, where he worked as an underage nightclub bouncer, became involved in drug trafficking, and eventually worked digging trenches for a plumbing company. His saviour was his decision to take the road of sobriety, and this led him to the wonderful world of music.
He’s created an incredibly vivid creative world in which these songs sit so happily. “Ricky & Rex are two brothers in Van Horn, Texas. They own a bar called The Diamond Saloon that is barely surviving due to the remote destination and rough, blue-collar clientele. Rex is relegated to running the place due to his brother’s frequent absences from shifts. A meagre existence in the west Texan desert, only survived by the hopes of gaining the attention of the new girl he pines for and hoping to one day claim a life beyond opening and closing the doors. Ricky, on the contrary, has no interest in the place or such an existence. He is trying something different. Thrill-seeking behaviour with big rewards with high risk. Cavalier & naive. Angry and excitable but ultimately unprepared for what comes with the territory. The territory that comes with the pursuit of a life in crime, nor the geography of the southwestern underworld, and the atmospheres weigh on a person’s spirit.”
We’re then frequently introduced to the narrator during the album, played by Austin legend Dennis O’Donnell. He appears in a series of piano instrumentals peppered throughout the album, pontificating about life generally.
After one of these piano interludes opening the album, we then have a classic honky tonk tune in The Diamond Saloon, which also introduces us to Wayne’s simply superb vocals, embellishing the songs beautifully. Next we have the best track on the album, Wait A Minute, a jaunty, rocking tune with some lovely crunchy electric guitar, mixing superbly with the honky tonk feel and a tune to die for. Glorious stuff.
Things slow down for Rex’s Lament, a lilting, laid-back tune, full of passion and feeling, with a superb electric guitar solo in the middle. En Laredo is an atmospheric Latin-tinged ballad. En Nuevo opens quietly with acoustic strumming and Wayne’s lovely vocals, before opening up with pedal steel and electric guitar weaving throughout the song. Recent single, Morning Light, is an up-tempo toe-tapper with the band, The Honky Tonk Machine, all contributing brilliantly, with the electric guitar again particularly effective.
Another single, Carlos, is a dreamy number with some particularly impressive fiddle playing. Another Dusty Road is a punchy honky tonk tune with further virtuoso guitar playing. The Honky Tonk Machine are Jamey Maness on pedal steel guitar, Jared Standish on fiddle/violin, Alex Riegelman on electric guitar, Conner Church on drums, and Will Felty on bass and harmony vocals. Jordan Hillman also appears on the album on piano.
So over the course of just over an hour, Wayne and his fantastic band take us on an incident-filled journey, creating vivid characters and displaying some seriously good musicianship. My only minor gripe is that, to these ears, the pedal steel is a little too dominant in the mix. Ambitious, yes, but a classy and highly enjoyable honky tonk treat.
