Texas Country Goodness – Johnny Caracy (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

As the name of the album might suggest, this new one from Johnny Caracy is both nostalgic and celebratory; it is infused with memories and moments in time. But if that sounds as if Texas Country Goodness is just a rose-tinted vision of the past, it isn’t. Okay, there is obviously a thread of that running through the songs. Everyone looks at their past in positive ways, remembering the good more than the past, but it also acts as a reminder that progress is not always for the better – if it ain’t broke, as they say, don’t fix it.

Take Austin Back Then, memories of a small local community that lost its identity when it became a beacon for the music industry. Over dexterous finger-picked notes and cascading chords, Caracy mourns the loss of the place he knew so well, a victim of its own success, something that we can all relate to one way or another within our own neighbourhoods.

And this makes for a great way of setting the scene for the album that follows, both musically and lyrically. Texas Nights is an anthem to a carefree life and the freedom that living on the land brings, and the physical land is the main recurring character in many of the songs. Dusty Roads & Old Fences tells of the honesty of the simple life working the earth, and Rain in July celebrates the first rains of summer, the life-giving floods that water the crops and fill the creeks, the banjo echoing the sound of those miracle drops beating their rhythms on the parched earth.

There is even room for the drifting balladic sway of Down To Laredo, a song that rises out of delicate acoustica to be joined by the floating and majestic pedal steel sonics and searing six-string salvos to build something genuinely anthemic.

The world changes constantly, and we change with it, whether we like it or not. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t celebrate the way that the world was when we were younger. And what better way to do so than in song so everyone can share those sweet and relatable memories? Every generation experiences such pathos and nostalgia, but few artists capture this changing world as elegantly and eloquently as Johnny Caracy does here.