You could probably write a pretty interesting book on how bands were formed. It runs the gamut from high school friends to answering ads in newspapers or from guitar shop bulletin boards. In the case of Texas trio Kyle Park, Jason Roberts, and John Michael Whitby, thoughtfully named The Texas Trio, they’ve been playing one-off events with each other for over a decade while maintaining full-time jobs in other bands. They decided to make it an official thing with the upcoming release of their debut album, The Texas Trio. It leans on a shared love of western swing and old-school country music, no doubt influenced by various members’ time in Asleep At the Wheel and in George Strait’s Ace In the Hole Band.
Roberts is currently leader of Bob Wills’ Country Playboys and that Texas sound permeates the record. Concho Valley Ride extolls the virtues of the people and places around the San Angelo area. Hot Headed Honey is an instantly familiar, yet original, song about a woman who’s “got me where she wants me…but that’s where I want to be.” Miss Molly is one of several tunes where all three musicians get to stretch out a bit on their instruments, and with in-song intros of the players it comes across as a very much a live-in-the-studio cut.
Speaking of the band’s instrumental prowess, the trio manages to project a wall of country sound you sometimes don’t get with twice that many players. Something to Me is an old-timey country number lamenting that “some folks believe country music is dead and gone”, but fortunately that’s not the case and “I’ll take old-school C&W every time.” Naomi is a country ballad about a “barrel-racing, cowboy chasing girl” who left our hero singing the blues in Cheyenne. When the Cimarron Was Red And On the Rise adds some Tejano style to a tale of a fateful cattle drive in 1883.
It’s frequently the case that debut albums cut across a variety of styles. The band is still finding their direction, and songs have been written over a long period of time, and perhaps polished with a variety of different personnel. In the case of The Texas Trio, they’re laser-focused on their style of country and western swing and with their debut self-titled record deserve to be an overnight success after twenty years.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.