This Friday’s Playlist is a long drive across Texas songwriting, with the gas gauge suspiciously low and at least three poets arguing in the back seat. It starts with the early architects, Buddy Holly, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Jerry Jeff Walker, Mickey Newbury, Doug Sahm, then rolls into the era when Texas writers turned country, folk, blues, Tex Mex, outlaw swagger, and barroom philosophy into their own weather system. Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, Kris Kristofferson, Steve Earle, Terry Allen, Kinky Friedman, Joe Ely, Freddy Fender, Lucinda Williams, Nanci Griffith, and Tish Hinojosa all belong to that larger map, where every highway has a ghost, every motel has a story, and every bad decision apparently deserved a bridge and a chorus.
From there, the road gets wider and less interested in staying inside the county line. Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keenbring wit and narrative precision, Rodney Crowell and Radney Foster connect Texas craft to Nashville polish, Alejandro Escovedo and James McMurtry drag the whole thing toward rock and literature, while Slaid Cleaves, Pat Green, Jack Ingram, Ryan Bingham, Bob Schneider, Spoon, Shinyribs, Kacey Musgraves, Shakey Graves, Charley Crockett, Vincent Neil Emerson, Parker McCollum, Sarah Jarosz, Kaitlin Butts, and Joshua Ray Walker prove that “Texas singer songwriter” is not one sound. It is a writing method, sharp details, stubborn melodies, dry humor, fatalism, tenderness, and the occasional narrator who should probably not be trusted with your car keys.
The ending loops back instead of neatly wrapping up. George Strait, Miranda Lambert, The Chicks, Don Walser, Hayes Carll, Leon Bridges, and Khruangbin show the mainstream, revivalist, soul, and crossover branches of the same stubborn tree. Townes Van Zandt landing late with “Pancho and Lefty” may look like a scheduling error, but it works as a reminder of the source code, after all the detours, the dust, the myth, and the elegant self sabotage are still there. Then Roky Erickson wanders in at the end with “Red Temple Prayer,” because Texas songwriting was never only front porches, beer joints, and doomed cowboys. Sometimes it also needs haunted electricity and someone making the sensible people nervous.
