This week’s crop of new tunes features music from Texas honky-tonker Jake Worthington, “Villain” hitmaker Lily Rose, traditional country-leaning Karen Waldrup, as well as Americana singer-songwriter Kelsey Waldon and bluegrasser Gena Britt. Meanwhile, duo Ryan and Rory team up with Jamey Johnson, while Chris Housman offers up a swampy tune with an upbeat vibe and plenty of “backwoods justice.”
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Check out all of these and more in Billboard‘s roundup of some of the best country, bluegrass and/or Americana songs of the week below.
Jake Worthington, “Not Like I Used To”
Texas native Worthington wraps his steel guitar-laced, barroom-born sound around this melancholy track, bringing an emotional precision as he laments how his heart is still taken with an ex-lover, although even those memories don’t live up to his past reality of being with his loved one. Worthington’s rich, stone-cold country voice feels like a worthy inheritor of the time-honored sounds of country titans such as George Jones and Mark Chesnutt, rather than simply an imitator. This fall, he’ll continue being on the road with fellow neo-traditional country stalwart Zach Top on Top’s Cold Beer and Country Music Tour.
Kelsey Waldon, “Ramblin’ Woman”
Waldon just released her excellent new album Every Ghost via Oh Boy Records, a project that concludes with this stirring, fiddle-driven version of Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard’s “Ramblin Woman.” Waldon’s rustic, warm vocal imbues the classic song’s lyrics of a tradition-eschewing, dream-chasing woman with a lived-in authenticity. “There’s a whole lot of places my eyes are longin’ to see/ Where there is no dream cottage, no babies on my knees,” she sings.
Lily Rose, “End Like This”
Lily Rose brings a potent voice and songwriting perspective to this polished heartbreaker of a song. An insistent percussion mirrors the multiple hits of emotional devastation that ripple in the wake of a long-held relationship’s ultimate unraveling. “Making it that far to fall apart should be a crime,” Rose sings. Written by Rose with Will Weatherly, Emily Weisband and Dallas Wilson, this evocative song blends vulnerability with a tough-minded resolve, a knowing that she’ll make it to the other side of heartache.
Chris Housman, “Hidin’ Something”
This swampy new song, which features Housman as not only a writer and singer but also on fiddle, adds to country music’s canon of songs about mistreated women who inflict their own brand of revenge — or “backwoods justice,” as Housman calls it. Uptempo with a bit of a ’90s country flair, the song is a superb, full-throttle musical vehicle for Housman’s confident, charismatic voice.
Karen Waldrup, “Blue Cowboy Boots”
Waldrup’s voice drips with confident twang as she weaves an infectious groove with a tale of a woman with the innate assuredness to take a breakup in stride. “I won’t be blue for long/ Bartender bring it on,” she dares the nearest drink server at her local dive bar. Waldrup wrote this barn burner with Ed Hill, with production by John Piniero.
Gena Britt, “He Likes to Fish”
Bluegrass group Sister Sadie member Gena Britt offers up a sweet, tender tribute to her late father, on this song recalling their deep conversations about her dreams for the future. She ends by reassuring him that she has indeed made those dreams come true. Written by Britt and Katelyn Ingardia, the song also features musicians Alan Bartram (bass/harmonies), Jason Carter (fiddle), John Meador (guitar/harmonies), Tony Creasman (drums), Jeff Partin (dobro) and Jonathan Dillon (mandolin).
Ryan and Rory (feat. Jamey Johnson), “Together Again”
Somber, acoustic-driven and earnest, duo Ryan and Rory (Ryan Follesé and Rory John Zak) team with Jamey Johnson to unearth this decades-old song, written by Johnson, former WSIX radio personality Gerry House and Follesé’s father Keith Follesé. Ryan and Rory and Johnson smartly employ a stripped back sound that allows the song’s lyrics of poetic heartbreak, inspired partly by the film The Wizard of Oz, to shine through. Ryan and Rory bring a soulful-style harmony that meshes well with Johnson’s burly, warm vocal and further elevate the song’s timeless sound.
