Wesley Hanna

Magnolia

Self-released

The name ‘Magnolia” will ever be associated with J.J. Cale’s song of the same name for roots music aficionados. However, this Magnolia, the title of singer-songwriter Wesley Hanna’s new album, is Hanna’s home, a small town in the state of Texas, situated, as written on the cover, 43 miles from Houston and 205 miles from Fort Worth.(Hint: stay with me, there’s another “Magnolia” too.)Granted, most of us know nothing about the place or maybe even the artist, Hanna.  What we do know is that he keeps good company. The producer is the acclaimed Pat Manske (drums), and Scrappy Jud Newcomb (guitars), Lloyd Maines (dobro), and Cody Braun (fiddle) from Reckless Kelly support Hanna. They are among the whopping 15 listed in the credits. That’s a good starting point for a refreshing album of authentic country music, Texas style, with all but one song written or co-written by Hanna. The songs form a cohesive set, as they are about his youth, family, or places that hold meaning for him.

The album begins with Braun’s fiddle-driven “Gulf Prairie Blues,” a nostalgic nod to Sargent, TX (“where the Brazos and the Gulf collide”) as well as a simple, blue-collar life. Hanna lived there until the age of six, but yearns to take his boys fishing there every so often. The emotionally deep ballad  “Life in Three Quarter Time” paints vivid character sketches of two former lovers, each of whom longs for the other in lonely moments. Rather than the typical ‘tears-in-the-beer’ song, Hanna finds solace in “This Old Guitar.”  The light-hearted “Thomas B. O’Hara” begins ostensibly as a trip to Ireland to honor his roots, but instead finds himself lured into drinking the Guinness in those many Irish pubs.  The music aptly plays like an Irish jig.

The title track mourns the quaintness of the small town he remembered, now plagued with all those trappings of encroaching suburbia. “The Right Thing” is a universally relatable song. No matter how we try to stay on the right path, we can’t help but ask what is ‘right’ these days (“Am I supposed to be an outlaw or am I supposed to be a saint?”). Newcomb’s chugging tremolo guitar imbues the tune. “Harvey’s Landfall” employs the metaphor of a hurricane to a poignant memory of a lost flame that keeps blowing through every so often. By contrast, “Behind the Pine Curtain” is a cliche-ridden country drinking song, the kind we’ve heard way too many times.  Even the guitar riffs are as trite as the lyrics. Hanna does put it in a narrative, but comes up short.

The fiddle and dobro-driven “Forever Kind of Love” arguably features the album’s best picking as Hanna sings about the value of enduring love (“that’s all I know’). To close the album, he covers Charlie Robinson’s “Magnolia,” a completely different song, a sad tale with a guy singing a girl’s song, as dark as  Bobby Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe.”

You can hear the influence of the great Texas songwriters in Hanna’s writing, whether it be Rodney Crowell, Adam Carroll, or Hayes Carll. He’s not yet near their level, but shows the potential to get there. At least, he keeps it real, all too often a rarity these days.

• JIm Hynes

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