The Texas Gentlemen – a flawless collective of Dallas-based musicians that have served as backing band to everyone from Kris Kristofferson to George Strait – recorded some of their latest LP Floor It!!! in Muscle Shoals, Alabama at the legendary FAME studio. And damn those Swampers’ ghosts haunting that studio made sure their fingerprints were all over Floor It!!! You have to go all the way back to Leon Russell and his band to find a group more adept at weaving that swamp organ sound and boogie Woodie piano so deftly.
The follow up to 2017’s TX Jelly carries on that loose, almost improvisational jam vibe that made that debut such an anomaly when it first came out. The album starts with a duo of instrumentals, the horn-heavy “Veal Cutlass” and the psych-rock, irresistible funk-heavy “Bare Maximum,“ the album’s first single, before slipping into slow-tempo, but no less funky, “Ain’t Nothing New,” with its blended vocals. Surprisingly, one of the band’s most impressive moments here is not on a groove-heavy jam but on the unflinching love song “Sing Me To Sleep”.
Part of the charm of The Texas Gentlemen is that tendency to share vocals; and there is no one dominant sound – while the organ or piano may tower on one song, the guitars and drums or brass take center stage just a few minutes later. The Texas Gentlemen are one of those rare examples in 2020 music where the old sum-of-its-parts adage really is much more than the individual musicians. And like the instruments taking turns in the spotlight, the music just as easily slips from one genre to the next – Country to R&B, Dixieland brass to Southern Rock – all ’60s and ’70s era slathered.
It’s no wonder Leon Bridges and Nikki Lane have relied on the Gentlemen to serve as their studio band. But there’s nothing like experiencing this band playing their own originals songs to make one appreciate how exceptional The Texas Gentlemen are when they saddle up in the groove.
