Bruce Robison keeps it real and mostly country

New CD is among the year's best from Austin performers.

By Michael Hoinski
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Saturday, October 04, 2008

James McMurtry lit dynamite in our ears with "Just Us Kids." Alejandro Escovedo knifed our hearts with "Real Animal." Now, Bruce Robison fleshes out the year's best in Austin music by licking our wounds and pouring us a drink with "The New World."

Halfway up the stairs that lead to Robison's hangout loft in his North Austin studio, there's a large photo of his wife, musician Kelly Willis. It's from the session that culminated in the cover for her album "Easy." She's looking mighty rapturous aglow in sunlight, an embodiment of pure American beauty the likes of which must have driven mad the man in Robison's romantic ballad "Echo."

That man is an amalgam of Bob Dylan and Buddy Holly. Robison knew Dylan had a girlfriend in high school named Echo. Later, on a trip to the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, Robison was "floored" when he saw a journal donated by Holly's mom that had "Echo" written all over it, and found out that Holly, too, had a teenage girlfriend named Echo. Bingo. A song was born.

"I guess there was this crazy, supernatural muse girl who was flying throughout the late '50s, that was just coming to Bob Dylan and Buddy Holly," Robison says. "You know, I've never met anybody named Echo, and here are two amazing, earth-shaking performers who were, I'm sure, just destroyed by an Echo."

Robison is wearing a Billy Joe Shaver "Original Honky Tonk Hero" T-shirt. He is shocked, but not surprised, to learn that Shaver has been indicted on charges of shooting a man in the face last year. He has plenty to say about it, but asks that it not be repeated. The T-shirt is nevertheless a good segue into Robison's take on his new album.

"It sounds like people kind of just playing together one foot away from the honky tonk," he says.

There are two ways to look at that "one foot away" part. Robison and band have either gone back to busking on the streets as a way of keeping it real. Or their sound is not quite country enough for the big room. As it turns out, it's a little bit of both. Let's explore in song.

On opener "The Hammer," Robison conjures folkie Jim Croce with Bad, Bad Leroy Brown's crack junkyard band. "California '85" is a song about wine that sounds like Jimmy Buffett in his finest hour, compliments of Lloyd Maines' steel guitar, Mickey Raphael's harmonica and Kelly Willis' backing vocals. When "Twistin' " comes 'round, you're in an "American Bandstand" frame of mind, fully expecting Robison to grab a comb out of his back pocket and rake it through his mane.

Save for a couple of songs — like "Only," buoyed by banjo, rhyming couplets and an occasional holler — the album definitely isn't the stereotypical country music the reality show "Nashville Star" implores of its contestants. All forced croon and twang. Not much nuance. Still, Robison insists "The New World" is country through and through. OK then, what is country?

"That's something to do over 50 beers with your buddies, you know?" Robison says. " 'Cause you can't work it out.

"If you just played, like, Hank (Williams) Sr., then definitely everybody would say you're country. But that, to me, is retro. And that's the struggle within country music these days, is I have no interest in being retro, any more than Willie Nelson did ... or probably Hank Sr. in his time."

Robison, 42, was born in Houston but grew up in Bandera. He made his name in his 20s as a songwriter, slinging tracks to Nashville. He has shown a knack for cracking a woman's point of view. Take "Bad Girl Blues," from the new album. Or just look at some of the beneficiaries of his songs: Faith Hill, Lee Ann Womack and the Dixie Chicks, who scored huge with "Travelin' Soldier."

On the songwriting continuum, Robison is closer to Buddy Holly, Guy Clark and Jackson Browne than he is Bob Dylan. "My lyrics are pretty straightforward," he says. "I'm wanting people to add their life experiences in between the lines."

Robison started his career as a performer a dozen years ago, about the time he and Willis got hitched. He's released six proper albums that have inched toward the pop side of country, like his wife's albums, in particular last year's "Translated From Love," and like those of their Texas brethren, the Dixie Chicks (multi-instrumentalist Emily Robison was until recently married to country musician Charlie Robison, Bruce's brother).

Robison learned the performance side of the biz from his wife. "I've felt lucky because Kelly has always been way further progressed in her career," he says. "When I met her, she had a record deal."

He also acknowledges that his four biggest hits have her on backing vocals. "It's no accident," he says. "She makes the songs better."

Still, they don't go overboard with their collaborations. They limit husband-and-wife shows to their annual holiday concert at the Paramount and the occasional one-off, like today's gig at Pioneer Farms, which is followed in the evening by Robison's CD-release show at the Broken Spoke. Then there's one very big joint date in January.

"We're playing the inauguration this cycle, in D.C.," Robison says.

"Even though you don't know who's going to win?"

"Yeah. We turned it down last time. I'll just tell you that much."