Review- Jason Boland & The Stragglers: The Last Kings of Babylon
The last time Jason Boland tried to celebrate a career milestone the pandemic shut down the 20th Anniversary tour, scheduled to celebrate the release of his debut Pearl Snaps record. He took advantage of that downtime to write and record his sci-fi concept album The Light Saw Me, then released a live album recorded at the venerable Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa. Now, it’s time for another landmark date in the history of the Stragglers and it arrives on March 14th via Thirty Tigers. The Last Kings of Babylon celebrates a quarter-century of Red Dirt excellence by one of the cornerstones of the genre. Jason describes the record as “a mirror, a retrospective, a reflection of everywhere we’ve been and everything we’ve learned over the last 25 years on the road.”
Photo by Will von Bolton
As Red Dirt music grew in Stillwater, Oklahoma in the 1990s, it was Boland - along with Cody Canada and Stoney Larue - most credited with developing the sound and branching out in three directions: Canada and his band Cross Canadian Ragweed rocked, while Stoney had more of a folk approach, and Boland maintained a country feel with a fiddle and steel guitar featured in his band, the Stragglers. Now with the release of his eleventh studio album, that course remains steady with a collection as strong as any in the catalog. The Last Kings of Babylon summarizes where Jason Boland and the Stragglers have been and gives Boland the opportunity to redirect the energy with these songs. “It just felt natural to do something more autobiographical this time around,” Jason says, “we wanted to make something that would really embody who we are as a band at this point in our evolution.”
As any fan of real Country music knows, it all starts with Hank and that is right where The Last Kings of Babylon begins. “Next to Last Hank Williams” is the snapshot of an aging singer who has played everywhere and is still trying to adapt to the changing live music scene. This especially autobiographical lyric captures the Boland of today:
“He took all the hard drugs through the bad times / The ones that left him numb and unaware / Nowadays it’s Beaujolais and reefer / Playing every club and county fair”
“Truest Colors” is a great “screw Nashville” song without ever coming right out and calling it by name, which makes it even more effective:
“To tell the truth I hate the business / It praises people I despise / I grew up hearing you get just desserts / And that’s not really how it works”
“Truest Colors” also has my new favorite Hell-freezing-over analogy: “I’ll be back around when Satan needs a coat.”
Despite being a great songwriter in his own right, Boland has never been afraid to cover others and there are several on this new record. “Drive” was written by Jason Eady, Jamie Lin Wilson, and Kelley Mickwee (and featured on Eady’s 2017 eponymous album). It features a steady rhythm-of-the-road feel while name-checking Jackson, Memphis, Hope, and Amarillo, and marking the steady path of moving away from someone: “I knew I would let go of you,” “I found myself thinking of you,” and “I finally forgot about you.” Songs about coming home from the road are a staple, but “Take Me Back to Austin” has a twist. “My wife and I lived in Austin when we first got together, and then we moved out into the country in Texas, where it can be pretty boring,” Boland explains. “People expect with how much time I spend on the road that I’d want to come home and kick my shoes off when I finally get a break, but all we ever want to do is head right back into Austin and catch a band.”
Any collection of songs covering the history of this band better have one about weed and “High Time” fits the bill just fine. It also happens to be one of the best tracks on the record, showcasing the keyboard work of Andrew Bair. Adam Hood gets a co-write credit on “One Law at a Time” and the song falls right in line with the Alabama song maker’s moral compass:
“There is a method to keep us in line / A natural circle that I stay outside / I’m under the radar so I don’t have to hide / Breaking one law at a time”
One of the OG’s of the Red Dirt scene is still with us and it’s great to see another Randy Crouch song featured on a Jason Boland record. The Tahlequah, Oklahoma fiddle player’s “Ain’t No Justice” was featured on his seminal 1995 release, It’s Too Bad. The version here matches the frenetic energy of that recording, propelled by the intense drums of Jake Lynn (who has since left the Stragglers to join the band of rising Okie star Wyatt Flores). Grant Tracy is still holding down the bottom on the bass where he has been for the last 25 years. AJ Slaughter gets to show off his resonator guitar skills on “Farmall,” a song about a tractor, while Nick Gedra’s fiddle is also prominently featured. Austin bluegrass whiz Noah Jeffries gets a co-write on this track that heralds back to several of Boland’s earlier records where the Stragglers really cook. After back-to-back up-tempo tunes things come back down in ¾ time with “Irish Goodbye” co-written with Houston-based songwriter Mando Saenz. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, the lyrics here perfectly describe the act of slipping out of a gathering unnoticed:
“I hope they keep laughing, dancing, and clapping to the same old overplayed song / Before the last toast I’ll be good as a ghost / They can raise ‘em up to someone who’s gone / It’s time for an Irish goodbye.”
Closing out the album is a Jimmy Lafave tune that was the title track to his 1995 release Buffalo Return to the Plains. Boland has consistently paid tribute to the architects of Red Dirt music, and Lafave was one of the early shining lights. This song sounds like one that a much younger Boland would have studied to learn the craft.
Producer extraordinaire Lloyd Maines is back at the controls for The Last Kings of Babylon which is fitting since he also produced Pearl Snaps. The new record has a live feel that Maines captured in only two days of basic tracking in the studio in the Texas Hill Country (save for a couple of tracks recorded in Tulsa).
More than two decades into his career, Jason Boland has given us proof that his creative spirit remains strong, and he continues to celebrate both the past and the future of the music he had a large part in defining. As he puts it, “These songs are about the journey. We were searching for something when we started this band, and we’re still out there searching for it now.”
Find out more about Jason Boland at the links below:
