Ray Wylie Hubbard Reckons With The Blues On ‘Tell The Devil I’m Gettin’ There As Fast As I Can’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

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When you’ve been around the block, it’s easy to sit up on your porch and yell at the kids to stay off your lawn. But Ray Wylie Hubbard is anything but a curmudgeon. In fact, the 70-year old Texas singer-songwriter seems to enjoy teaming up with younger generations, from country superstar Eric Church to his own son Lucas, who plays lead guitar on his new album Tell The Devil I’m Getting’ There As Fast As I Can. Hubbard may not be kicking the kids off his lawn, but his new album feels fit for the porch as it is loaded with the kind of dark stories and characters that make him one of the finest lyrical storytellers around.

Devil feels like a nod to the blues and Hubbard’s devotion to the form can be heard in nearly song. The album starts with a crash with the spoken word tune “God Looked Around”, a gruff song about the formation of life presented in Texas blues fashion. “Spider, Snake, and Little Sun” chugs along with harp and a simple foot beat that brings to mind Lightnin’ Hopkins before things pick up with a little more electricity on the slide guitar-heavy “Lucifer and The Fallen Angels,” one of the album’s strongest and hardest rocking tracks.

“House of the White Rose Bouqet” feels autobiographical as Hubbard adapts a haunting, Man In Black tone as he sings about growing up on the edge – smoking, drinking, gambling and loving. One of the more heartfelt moments comes from the album’s title track as Hubbard confesses his love of music and fondly shares his own tales from the road, offering up an alt-country testament to getting old but never slowing down. Adding Lucinda Williams and Eric Church on harmonies gives the song an emotional, we’re-all-in-this-together vibe that feels downright spiritual. “The Rebellious Sons” may take the cake for most psychedelic track with the help of Hubbard’s Austin pals the Bright Light Social Hour, while “Old Wolf” proves to be a proper dancing track with its gutbucket blues groove and Hubbard howling like a wolf. The mandolin-strummed “Prayer” is eerily reminiscent of a Townes Van Zandt tune and hits hard before the album closes on a positive note with the quiet and stripped down “In Times of Cold”, allowing Hubbard’s vocal harmonies with Patty Griffin to shine against a backdrop of acoustic guitar and harmonica.

As its title suggests, the devil is a reoccurring character in many of the songs on the album, and so are the types of down and out characters one would expect to find in his orbit. Mystical ideas and spiritual forces have weighed heavily on Hubbard’s songs over the years, and here he seems to be both reckoning with them and coming to a comfortable place in his elder years. With so many albums under his belt, it’s difficult to say where Devil stacks up compared to the rest of his catalogue, however, his ability to spin a good tale seems to only be getting sharper. Hubbard’s voice has definitely aged a bit, but his spirit hasn’t aged a day.

Photo Credit: Mary Keating-Bruton

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