If you’re a musician in California, you can feel a bit cloistered. Between Palm Springs and Lubbock there’s a lot of not much. So faced with an 8+ hour drive to the next gig east of the Mojave, or picking up 4 gigs in the 400 miles from LA to San Francisco or Sacramento, it’s hard not to take the easy route. Said another way, a California country musician deciding to make an album in Austin or Nashville is a conscious decision to push the envelope. LA’s Alex Owen decided to do just that and add his own brick to the house of country music in Nashville, accompanied by a cadre of top notch studio players.
If you’re familiar with Owen’s decidedly-not-eponymous band, Lasers Lasers Birmingham, Mystery Highway won’t be much of a riddle. Its foundation is the straight-ahead honky tonk that sparkled on the previous albums. Start with Biloxi Don’t Forget, the last song on the CD. It’s a commentary on people’s view of climate change where, “the Yankees call it science, but the Baptists claim it’s about sin.” Need Me A Savior is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the desire to shirk responsibility. Trippin’ Balls at the Honky Tonk imagines the result if a country band got dosed by hippies. The title cut also plays with a little psychedelia in a story of an out-of-body experience in the desert. You can just about hear Junior Brown coming around the corner out of the haze.
The Nashville environs put their stamp on the project as well. New All Time Low is a country ballad about personal ethics where “she was burning down, I got warm by the fire.” Gravity Boots is a pedal steel-driven number about a predictable man suddenly falling head over heels in love. Bruise Like A Peach is more of a folk song set to country style and showcases the Music City rhythm section that holds down the fort throughout the set list. Perhaps the pinnacle of the Nashville influence is I Should Be Leavin‘ and features Tony Martinez on co-lead vocals.
As much as I can admire Alex Owen for getting out of his comfort zone and recording his new album with a bunch of musicians outside his normal circle of collaborators, the attraction of Lasers Laser Birmingham is still good, old school honky tonk. To their credit, the Nashville crew just polished up the brass on the bar and kept the sawdust on the dance floor. That left Mystery Highway as a twangy, shiny new example of a tried-and-true vein of country music.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.