Artist. It's a term that's become synonymous for anyone who makes music, from Bruce to Britney or Abba to Zappa. But in the case of Ray Wylie Hubbard, artist is, no lie, the truest description of who he is and what he does.
Yes, Hubbard is a Texas singer-songwriter, complete with the classic trifurcated handle, fundamental chapter of the canon in his song catalog ("Redneck Mother"), and enough wild hairs in his past to qualify him as a legend. But along the way, his attention began to leave matters extraneous to his art and soul by the wayside and focus on the beauty and potential to be found in the blank canvas of, in his case, the yet to be written and recorded song. As artists tend to do.
The result has been one of the most satisfying musical and lyrical journeys to witness over the last decade or so. And as his latest album "Growl" proclaims with all the feisty authority inherent in its title, Hubbard this time prowls into funkier and more raucous musical and lyrical realms. Yeah, it's art. But "Growl" is a piece where dark and wild colors are splashed across a backdrop of materials that Hubbard has unearthed from his seminal musical inspirations.
Hubbard's previous album, "Eternal and Lowdown", as the title implied, found him at a fulcrum point between his spiritual quests in song and his renewed fascination with the styles and themes found in the blues. "Growl" now follows Hubbard down his own proverbial Highway 61 even deeper into a creative delta, fashioning his own brand of Texas bohemian blues.
As Texas music critic Richard Skanse notes in the album's liners, the references have shifted from the poetic (Rilke) and literary (Dante) to the bluesmen that enchanted Hubbard's imagination when he first began playing music (such as Mississippi Fred McDowell, Muddy Waters and Lightning Hopkins) and continue to fire his muse today. Growl comes as the natural result of Hubbard honing his fingerpicking and bottlenecking chops while lyrically exploring the wild side of life where he once roamed. It's also informed by his continuing collaboration with producer and guitarist Gurf Morlix (who produced "Eternal & Lowdown", and has been hailed for his work with Lucinda Williams, Robert Earl Keen, Tom Russell, and Hot Club of Cowtown and others). It's a disc rife with morality tales where the devil gets his due and the themes, grooves and riffs are slathered with fatback and deep-fried in Southern sin and soul. Capping the set are his archetypal tale of the music business game, "Rock'n'Roll Is A Vicious Game," and an anthem sure to become a rallying cry in the Lone Star State and beyond, "Screw You, We're From Texas."
"Growl" continues Hubbard's restless and relentless lifelong journey of personal and artistic discovery. Born in Oklahoma and raised in the south Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff, Ray Wylie Hubbard started playing music at a time when the notion that a man with a guitar could aspire to creating high art was actually all the rage. After wearing out the grooves in Bob Dylan's first album, he started a folk group with two friends in his junior year of high school, enchanted by the notion of the vagabond troubadour life.
Not long after, Hubbard and his pals landed a summertime folk club residency in Red River, New Mexico. One night he ventured into a local hardcore redneck bar to buy some beer for a picking party, and later that evening turned the chilly reception he received from the cowboys into an off the cuff song for the amusement of his friends. The throwaway number, "(Up Against The Wall) Redneck Mother," nonetheless drifted on the musical breeze to Austin, TX, where Jerry Jeff Walker heard and recorded it. It subsequently became an anthem of the burgeoning progressive country movement, adopted by both the ropers it parodied and the dopers who got the joke.
The song's success offered Hubbard a ready audience and won him a record deal with Warner Bros. When the final mixes of his debut album were so disappointing that it brought him to tears, he forsook pursuing a recording career to become a hippie honky-tonk hellion fronting the wildest (if also most entertaining) act on the Texas country-rock circuit. At the same time, Hubbard also lived both the country and rock'n'roll high lives to the fullest, drinking and snorting as much of the bad boy iconography as he could get his hands on.
Then, on his 41st birthday, Hubbard called closing time on his personal party. In his newly sober state, he wondered what he had to show for the previous two decades or so. Yet he also discovered a tabula rasa on which he could rewrite his musical destiny by dedicating himself again to his original goal of becoming a bohemian musical poet.
His aptly titled 1991 album, "Lost Train Of Thought", immediately signaled that Hubbard was ready to claim his place as what Associated Press calls "one of the leading lights among Texas singer-songwriters." Over the course of four subsequent studio albums - "Loco Gringo's Lament", "Dangerous Spirits", "Crusades of the Restless Knights", and "Eternal and Lowdown" - Hubbard has secured his stature, distinguishing himself by the consistently stunning quality and depth of his musical output with work that is literate and poetic, spiritual yet down-home, and highly musical.
The result has been reams of critical hosannas, an ardent audience of admirers at home and abroad, and the personal satisfaction that comes from serving first and foremost the needs and even at times the whims of his creative soul. The release of "Eternal and Lowdown" in 2001 signaled a creative peak for Hubbard, with the Americana chart-topping hailed as his "greatest" (Austin Chronicle), "bluesiest" (SonicNet.com) and "best sounding" album (Philadelphia Inquirer), as well as his "most musically satisfying recording" (No Depression) and "most cohesive and most eclectic set to date" (CD Now). Yet now in 2003, the artist trumps himself yet again with Growl, promising more creative triumphs for some time to come. -Rob Patterson
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