Asleep at the Wheel (2015)

Nothing much has changed since I reviewed them last year.  Which was actually pretty damn funny, if I do say so myself.  However, with great-big-silly-adventures like this blog come great responsibility, so here are factoids from the Internet that may or may not be true:

• From Paw Paw, West Virginia.  Paw Paw.  Seriously.
• Opened for Alice Cooper in 1969 in Washington, DC.  How weird was that show? Start off with some old people swing, then straight into "Feed My Frankenstein?"  Actually, I think Girl Talk did that last year.
• 1977's Best Country and Western Band in Rolling Stone magazine.
• Wikipedia lists 35 members and ex-members in the band.  Impressive.
• They were scheduled to perform at the White House on 9/11.
• Their song, "The Letter that Johnny Walker Read," was used on a Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas radio station.
• Nine Grammy Awards.
• The have played the Austin City Limits festival 1,174 times.

They do have a new album out, so I gave it a spin or two, and its actually pretty damn enjoyable.  It is (SHOCKER!!) another tribute to Bob Wills called Still the King: Celebrating the Music of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.  Which is kind of funny, since back when the 100th anniversary of Wills' birth was coming up a few years ago, Ray Benson apparently said "Some folks wanted another tribute album," Benson said. "But we'd already done two. I felt like we'd be cashing in on Bob's ghost."  I guess letting ten more years pass was enough to resolve any of those concerns.  Anyway, the new disc is chock full of great guests adding excellent flavor to the music, like Lyle Lovett, Merle Haggard, Avett Brothers, Willie, George Strait, Robert Earl Keen, Kat Edmonson, Jamey Johnson; its a good list of guests. And even aside from the famous names helping out, these guys absolutely stick the sound of classic western swing.  I mean, pitch freaking perfect tunes.  Pretty awesome.

"Tiger Rag" with Old Crow Medicine Show is a hell of a lot of fun, and "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" with Kat Edmonson is also damn fine, but the most listened to tune on the album so far (17k spins) is the Avett Brothers track called "The Girl I Left Behind Me."

Banjo action with some barroom piano.  Fun stuff.  I like the whole album.  I likely won't go see them at the festival, but this album is good enough to keep around.