Tag: Hayes Carll

I bought this album seven years ago and then didn’t listen to it until last year for reasons that I haven’t been able to remember.  And when I did, I just added it to a large rotation of music tracks so that I never even noticed that the songs were by someone new.  But today I played the album and said, “Hey I love this stuff!”  So, I looked him up and found out his genre is considered “Americana.”  I figure that means he doesn’t want to be called a country music singer because he’s a lefty and there’s more street cred with the hippies if you say you’re an Americana artist.  Well since I couldn’t find any offensive lefty stuff on his website, I haven’t cast him into the outer darkness.

This guy writes most of his own stuff and it’s good.  Stylistically, it’s all over the map.  There’s blues, country, rock and roll, folk and a mixture of acoustic and electric instruments.  He’s got sad songs and laments, comic songs and tales of the musician life.  It’s really hard to pigeon hole him.  His voice is a little ragged but definitely interesting.

He’s definitely not mainstream commercial country which for me is kind of a good thing.  I’m going to have to get some of his other albums.  I recommend this one for country music fans.  Whether he’s filthy hippie or not is an open question.  I’ll have to do more research.