MUSIC

Goode's Armadillo Palace is proud to welcome Lucky Tubb.

Damn the Luck, the new CD release by Lucky Tubb & The Modern Day Troubadours evokes images of smoke-filled honky tonks, fallen angels, gun–toting rounders, hard drinkin’ backsliders and hopelessly scarred romantics. This CD is as honest and real as a hot plate of biscuits and gravy. The melodies, the production and the instrumentation on these eleven songs could have easily fit in on an old Wurlitzer juke box, in any Texas beer joint, honky tank, or roadhouse, during the early to mid 50’s, when Ernest (Tubb) had us waltzing across Texas (another Tubb, Talmedge , actually wrote “waltz across Texas”)

Lucky Tubb has taken it upon himself to preserve his family’s musical heritage and does so with reverence and pride. The songs here shine like sequins on a vintage Nudie suit (early Porter and pre-Gram), with Lucky staking vocal claim to the sound created by his elders. This is really a Tubb “family” album. Lucky’s Uncle Douglas wrote three of the eleven songs on the album (written between 1952 and 1956), and another relative (Ronnie Wade) gets the star treatment with a song from 1957, Lucky himself penned six songs on the CD and they sound as genuine and heartfelt as those written over 50 years ago.

So, put that damned gun down and just listen. The Modern Day Troubadours play with Freshness and urgency. Moaning steel guitar, lonesome mandolin, and sad sweeping fiddle lines (maybe even a burning hot lick or two from an old fender Telecaster) and are all seamlessly woven into the production. Lucky and the band wrap around the lyrics and melodies like calloused hands on an ice cold longneck. No clutter, no overplaying, no excess and no grandstanding can be heard. The sound here is a black and white photograph that you can still see (and hear) with your eyes closed.

The tunes are timeless and sound familiar, yet new, coming off as fresh and flavorful as southern fried chicken. These troublesome songs of love lost, heartache, and heartbreak go down best in a shot glass full of bonded whiskey. Thank goodness that we occasionally get exposed to “insurgent” country CD’s like this. It’s music that is rough cut, and bootleg-distilled full of tears of yesterday’s broken hearts, and held together by the authority of a loaded glove compartment pistol. Lucky seems to have his finger firmly on the trigger. Buy him a drink. He’s got a long story to tell.

R. Simeon Franks
Lone Star Music Magazine, December/ January 2009

Photo by Dustin Wayman.