All tagged John Baumann Album Review

Review- John Baumann: Border Radio

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.”

John Baumann: Country Shade

I fear we’re living in the strangest of times /

Where no matter where you stand /

You’re always on opposing sides /

John Baumann seems to sum up 2020 with those lines from “The Country Doesn't Sound the Same,” the opening track of his latest record Country Shade. With the COVID-19 pandemic bringing live music to a sudden halt, the usual cycle of touring to promote a new release has kept Baumann off the road and you may have missed out on this record when it came out in June. It deserves a closer look.