Review- John Baumann: Border Radio
Photo by Carly Du Menil
The only thing a Texan likes better than a good story is a good story that takes place in Texas. John Baumann is a fifth-generation Texan and has filled his new record titled Border Radio (out on October 6) with songs that tell stories filled with what he describes as “colors and vignettes from San Antonio and Hill Country down to the border.” For this, his sixth album, Baumann changes perspectives from his own to the people in his songs and has a writing credit on each of the nine tracks. “My pleasure as a songwriter is to be somebody else for three and a half minutes,” he continued. “I’m not the hunting and fishing guy in ‘South Texas Tradition’ and I’m not falling in love on the border. The record is a journey of someone’s experiences through a certain place in the world – south Texas. And discreetly, it’s a love story. It’s all the highs and lows of love. And there’s real character in the border region, there’s some controversy to it, but I wanted to get away from the news about the border walls and instead focus on it as a beautiful, interesting, and mysterious part of the state.”
Regionalism is strong among Texans and Baumann’s Hill Country narrator in “Turning Gold”
finds out when he breaks down coming out of Louisiana:
I hated every second of that bridge in Baton Rouge /
Crossed the swamp to Texas / Blew a tire out on 10 /
These Beaumont boys look at me like I ain’t one of them
Many head to the oil fields around Midland in west Texas for work. That’s what these young men in “South Texas Tradition” have done but are home and happy to be back in the woods.
Big Bill and Tito come up from Carrizo after ten days on Permian shale /
They ain’t seen a woman since Jags in Odessa /
But tonight, all they want is an eight point white tail
Baumann says his early experiences in the Texas Hill Country gave him the idea for “Boy’s Town,” “I worked at a camp in Kerrville for several years and namely with the horses in the stables. I’d heard stories that back in the 1930s and ‘40s, the counselors would take 2–3 day treks to Mexico for some r&r. I thought I would take that bit of history and expand it into a modern tale of a guy who goes to Mexico, looking for one thing, but comes back with something totally different.”
Rode stolen horses down to Mexico one august afternoon /
I’d been working at a guest ranch since the dog days of June /
Spent the season in the stable taking riders in and out /
Longing for the woman worth writing home about
The McDonald Observatory is in the Davis Mountains of west Texas because of the absence of light pollution. Here is where the stars at night are truly big and bright. These are the wide-open spaces where towns are few and far between. It’s not the middle of nowhere but you can see it from there. The Rio Grande is never far but there isn’t much activity along the border because it is so remote. The driver of the car in “Border Radio” is listening to a Mexican radio broadcast of a woman singing in Spanish:
Well, I lost that station driving thru the Davis Mountain range /
Broken heart outside of Marfa
“The Night Before the Day of the Dead” paints the vivid picture of a wild night on San Antonio’s Riverwalk:
Painted apparitions haunt the river walk /
I’m back among the living after dying all night long
The proud owner of the “Gold El Camino” describes its purchase:
Bought it up in Houston, paid for in cash /
Came with a bobble head of Jesus on the dash
Baumann brings the story of “Revving Engines, River Street” to the local level:
Down the River Route to Kendrick’s Place /
Past the county line where the cops can’t find ya
Even the song that doesn’t specifically name-check Texas locations give you a Lone Star sense of place. Baumann says he wanted the rollicking “Saturday Night Comes Once a Week” to sound like it came out of a Larry McMurtry novel or a Hal Ketchum song.
To Hell with Sunday morning, you ain’t going to church /
Haven’t been in a decade, I think they call of the search /
You won’t find it in the scripture if it’s a good time you seek /
A different kind of communion / Saturday night comes once a week
“My Heart Belongs to You” is the one song on the record that isn’t a story told from a different character’s perspective. John says he was telling a friend about how supportive his wife was to let him tour and travel and they decided she needed a song:
My heart belongs to you / Ain’t we the luck of the draw /
Sometimes the things you can’t explain, explain it all
Border Radio gives John Baumann the opportunity to showcase his songwriting skills and the freedom to go places as a singer that more personal songs may have discouraged. The song lyrics are descriptive, and the music matches the spectrum of styles heard in the areas of Texas inhabited by the characters.
“I hope the listener can transport themselves out of their lives and go somewhere else in a cinematic way,” he said. “I hope listening to this album is like going to the movies. This album is about experiencing something else, somewhere else.”
Find out more about John Baumann at the links below:
