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Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Tim Wagoner of The Fabulous Trutones

Comin’ Back Live finds The Fabulous TruTones doing what great live bands do best: locking into a groove and then refusing to stay in one lane. The album moves effortlessly from classic blues in the spirit of the Three Kings, to the sun-baked shimmer of mid-’70s Southern California roots-rock, to the rocking edge of old-school country—and back again. It’s blues at the center, but it’s also proof that blues can be a launchpad, not a box.

The band is led by singer and guitarist Tim Wagoner, a road-tested writer and performer with deep roots in multiple music worlds. His résumé includes two decades inside the Nashville songwriting machine and nearly a decade touring with Big Al and the Heavyweights. When Wagoner moved back home to Iowa about ten years ago, forming a new band wasn’t even on his radar. But the blues has a way of pulling you back in. As Wagoner puts it, when it’s in your DNA, the “music vortex” is inevitable.

That pull became real when his longtime friend Paul Ferguson (bass, vocals) convinced him to start a new project. After a few early lineup shifts, the band found its anchor behind the kit when Jim Dreier joined in early 2023. That’s when the sound truly clicked—and The Fabulous TruTones were born.

While Comin’ Back Live delivers the punch and energy you want from a live record, it’s more than a collection of songs captured on stage. It’s a masterclass in songwriting and dynamics—the art of making each track feel like its own world without losing the thread of who the band is. Wagoner’s writing is the engine. “I’ve always been a songwriter,” he explains. “Even when I was a teenager and not very good at it, I was always writing. When I lived in Dallas for a decade and was involved in the Texas blues universe, I got more aggressive about it. When I moved to Nashville and started working for publishing companies as a songwriter, that’s when I got really serious.”

Even during his years immersed in country music for a living, Wagoner never stopped playing blues, rock, and roots. To him, those styles aren’t separate genres—they’re connected branches of the same tree. “Country comes from the blues,” he says. “Listen to those early Johnny Cash records on Sun; it’s rock, country, and rockabilly all at once.” That long view is what gives Comin’ Back Live its shape-shifting identity. What Wagoner has matured into, he says, is “country blues with a Midwest twist”—and that description fits the TruTones perfectly: grounded, gritty, and surprisingly versatile.

However the album hits you—blues record, roots-rock ride, or country-leaning groove machine—one thing is clear: The Fabulous TruTones use the blues as a stepping stone, pushing it into new places that are well worth visiting again and again.

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