Austin’s Reckless Kelly (Official Site / Myspace) has never been the type of band to sit still for long. For those who are unfamiliar with one of the top names in the ever-growing “Texas/Red Dirt” scene, Willy Braun (lead singer) and his brother Cody (fiddle, harmonica, mandolin) grew up traveling the globe as members of the family band, Muzzie Braun & The Boys. In the title track to their 2005 album, Wicked Twisted Road, Braun sings that he “hit the million mile mark at 17 years old.” It’s with this spirit that the Brothers Braun, along with Jay Nazz (drums), Chris Shiflett (bass) and David Abuyeta (lead guitar) take another trip outside the state’s borders to their home state of Idaho. This trip isn’t one they take on a physical freeway made of asphalt, mind you. The men of Reckless Kelly traverse a path of memories and reacquaint themselves with the music of the home they enjoyed before dreams and tour buses carried them away to the fertile and creative soil of the south.

With their new Yep Roc release, Somewhere In Time, Reckless Kelly pays tribute to the songs of Pinto Bennett & The Famous Motel Cowboys as they also crank their country-shuffling up higher than they have in years. This new collection of songs – covers of tunes originally performed and penned by Pinto Bennett – is the best kind of tribute album, as the need to simply rehash the material wasn’t the goal. Reckless Kelly effectively and lovingly adorns these tunes with their own swagger and avoids offering simple carbon copies that would render the songs pointless and trivial. It’s also important to note that the boot-stompin’, honky-tonk sonic of tunes like “I Hold the Bottle, You Hold the Wheel” and “Bird On a Wire” required the band to alter their recent musical  and creative direction rather drastically.

While the groups early releases from the late 1990′s Milican  and Reckless Kelly Acoustic - Live at Stubbs (which featured ”She Sang the Red River Valley,” another Bennett song) had prominent roots and country spirit flowing throughout them, their harder driving rock tendencies began to show in earnest, and to great effect, with their Sugar Hill release Under the Table and Above the Sun. With the release of 2008′s Bulletproof, Reckless Kelly had transformed into a lean, mean and defiant rock outfit that had no qualms with ruffling the feathers with their topical and biting lyrics mixed with pulsing beats and chugging guitars.

With all of these surrounding story lines aside, this is a great record, full of distinctive tales and an exemplary blend of roots, country, and rock vibes. For those who have wondered what a band having an insane amount of fun sounds like on record, here it is for all to experience. The band confidently interprets the source-material, and as a result, produces a record that might be their most honest and true work to date, regardless of where the collection originated.

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Click here for a preview of Reckless Kelly’s new album, Somewhere In Time (Available on February 9th from Yep Roc Records).

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Be sure to catch Reckless Kelly and a ton of other great artists when they take the stage at Larry Joe Taylor’s Texas Music Festival near Stephenville, April 20-24.

 

Kelly Dearmore is a freelance writer, mean pot of chili maker and opinionated music lover. To read more about what Kelly is listening to, visit him here on The Squawker weekly or daily on his personal music blog, The Gobblers Knob.