A fantastic-sounding third album from the ‘outlaw prince’ treats us to some great songs and a sublime band.
One of the first things that strikes you about this record is just how good it sounds. Many records are produced on a low budget with limited equipment, and whilst artistically, this may not be an issue, when you come across a record that gets the full Nashville production treatment, boy, is it noticeable. It has, for want of a technical term, a big sound which makes you wish you had a bigger amplifier, bigger speakers, bigger everything. The record is sumptuously arranged and highly polished and has a feel only achieved by using the best professionals around. The roster of A-list personnel includes musicians Chuck Leavell, Glenn Worf, Matt Chamberlain, Jedd Hughes, Nick Bockrath, and Harrison Whitford, who between them have worked with just about everybody who is anybody. On top of that, the album is produced by the industry stalwarts Frank Liddell (Miranda Lambert, Lee Ann Womack) and Eric Masse (Parker McCollum). It has a feel of the highest quality, the band totally in the pocket, polished and at times sublime.
Payne released his first album, The Drifter, in 2004, yet it took 16 years for the second one, Blue Eyes, The Harlot, The Queer, The Pusher & Me to appear. Now 6 years on, we have, in Payne’s own words, “the third instalment”. As Payne offered in a recent interview with Americana UK, “That’s what I’ve been joking about. I kind of loosely call it Volume Three in a ‘Life Well Lived’ series”. He likes to tell stories, and it’s clear that the album provides a continuation of the stories told in his previous records.
Payne is very much from the country ‘outlaw’ tradition. His mother was GRAMMY® Award-winning country singer Sammi Smith, and his father was a longtime member of Willie Nelson’s band, guitarist Jody Payne. He was named after his godfather Waylon Jennings, one of the original outlaws. Payne has played with and supported Nelson, and being in his company has been like a masterclass both in writing and in the music business more generally. Along with this background of outlaw royalty, Payne has a well-told history of being abused by his uncle, being rejected because of his sexuality, and of many years of drug abuse that followed. As Payne said in a recent interview, he is just glad to be alive after all he has been through.
On Wayward, Payne solo-penned 6 of the 13 tracks; the rest are co-writes with a range of notables, including Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, Matraca Berg, and Pam Tillis. The album starts strongly with Looking For A Feeling. Some energetic, syncopated bass playing from Worf and superbly measured drumming from Chamberlain quickly reinforce, in case there was any doubt, the quality of this band. Payne freed to deliver his take on the idea that we’re all looking, trying to find ‘that feeling’. Postcards reinforces that this record is very much from the outlaw side of things. It’s unmistakable Allman vibe (Rambling Man anyone?) takes us out on the road out of Nashville, maybe going down to Georgia, I don’t know. Not sure if this is a result of the influence of Leavell, the searing slide work which permeates the track or the highly impressive rhythmic pyrotechnics around halfway through, which, despite having it on repeat, has defeated my understanding of how these guys hold it together so brilliantly.
The album treats us to a wide variety of styles. Payne shows us his softer side with the chilled-out The Delta. Darla is more upbeat yet has an undercurrent of sadness and struggle. Holding On To Lonely is a recent single and is a powerful and moving co-write with Charlie Worsham. Haunting has a great uplifting chorus and again some great slide guitar work from one or maybe several of the highly accomplished guitarists. Caramello is a story of love and family honour, latin rhythms, with echoes of a ‘Romeo and Juliet-esque’ drama and tragedy.
Throughout this album Payne’s voice sounds both old and young at the same time. He is relating some pretty heavy life experiences, and he certainly has the gravitas to make his stories credible. In Hell Is Empty, Payne announces that the apocalypse is pretty much here: “Now that the demons are released /Hell is Empty”, and unfortunately he sounds pretty convincing. Yet maybe some hope in Watch Him Die, which has Payne moving on from the man he was to the man he has become. The mesmerising repeating guitar motif, which, towards the end, morphs into manic guitar, reminds that this is not a formulaic country album.
An album highlight with a highly evocative refrain is The Roses. Payne’s musical influences are clearly wide and the feel of this as it begins reminds of Bowie’s Rock ’n’Roll Suicide. Together feels more sentimental and has a lovely background vocal from co-writer Ashley Monroe, and, again, some fine acrobatic bass playing towards the end. Find A Way has a honky tonk vibe and, due to the high standard of the rest of the album, is for me a less memorable song. One of the most poignant tracks is the latest single Weed By The Wall, in which Payne tries to figure out what he is and how he fits in, how his existence, God’s and nature all fit together.
This album delivers on several different levels. Payne has assembled a tremendous band which, if you were minded to zone out of Payne’s stories, you could listen to in their own right. Along with the highly polished and professional production, you can imagine hearing this album in just about any setting. There is a lot of material here and certainly more than enough to fill the 2-disc vinyl release due in a few weeks. At an hour long, it’s tremendous value yet almost too much to digest. Yet there is really nothing that should be left out, and the use of the superb musicians and the freedom given them to express themselves provides an additional and welcome dimension. The juxtaposition of more traditional-sounding country songs like Together and The Delta and some of the songs which incorporate vibes from the southern rock end of the spectrum should make a wide audience take notice. This complex mixture of elements is what defines and differentiates artists, and Payne draws from a wide range of musical influences and styles to get his point across. This is a quality piece of work, and we can only hope we don’t have to wait too long for Volume 4.
