Ray Wylie Hubbard

Artist Description

“An Americana masterpiece! Hubbard’s songs are spooky, lean, raw; they crackle with cinematic scope and live-wire energy; his words are pure ghost poetry telling us secret stories from the real American West.”
–Thom Jurek, allmusic.com

"There’s a fair number of weathered-but-genius country singer-songwriters with husky voices, brilliant yet down-to-earth lyrics, F-you attitudes, decades of experience, and just cult status to show for it, but Hubbard’s one of the top two or three (in Texas his cult is more like a bona fide religion), and his gritty mix of blues and rock elements sounds the best. Most of this album is pretty raw and stripped-down, but when his band beefs up and cuts loose—as on, well, “Loose” (among others)—the Rolling Stones sound like a bunch of lame-ass slackers in comparison. He hasn’t made a less-than-great studio album in the past two decades, and this is one of the better ones."
-Jack Rabid , The Big Take Over

 
Ray Wylie Hubbard writes the kind of songs that make you want to ride along no matter where he's going, because you know it's gonna get strange somewhere along the way. The references to Muddy Waters being as deep as William Blake ("I really do believe it,'' Ray says) and lipstick pickups, resonator slides, the dreams of drunken poets, deceased call girls, opium, wasp's nests, clouds growing a tail, his ability to segue seamlessly from primal exclamations of carnal lust into songs about salvation without pausing for irony; and a craftsmanship that manages to rhyme mescaline and gasoline and Volkswagen with dragon while painting vivid portraits of characters both real and unreal, all evoke a sense of place that is larger than life but in no way made up.  Nominated for 3 Americana music awards in 2010 including Artist of the Year and Album of the Year, Ray Wylie Hubbards latest album cements his place in the American songwriter cannon.