Jason Boland & the Stragglers stay down-to-earth with new album “Rancho Alto”
A version of this story appears in Wednesday’s Life section of The Oklahoman.
Jason Boland & the Stragglers stay down-to-earth on “Rancho Alto”
The band, which has its roots in Stillwater’s red dirt music scene, tells stories of the common man on its earthy new album.
With their new album “Rancho Alto,” Jason Boland & the Stragglers hearken back to their days on The Farm in Stillwater.
The band’s frontman and primary songwriter hears a more earthy folk tone to their music on their sixth studio album, which takes its title from the Spanish for “High Ranch.”
“I don’t think we’re trying to have all the explosions and bells and whistles,” says Boland, who was born and raised in Harrah. “You know, we’re not really trying to emulate pop music, so it keeps getting in some ways almost more acoustic. But I would think within the songs, there’s a little bit more of a social responsibility and there’s also, I think, in a way more sweetness and more love in it.”
In some ways, the songs on “Rancho Alto,” released Tuesday on Boland’s Proud Souls Entertainment, brings the band full circle to Stillwater, where the band formed in 1998.
“That’s not to say that then it’s complete again. “You know, it may have come back around this time, but not to say that we’re not gonna go out and do anything crazy and different again,” says Boland in a recent phone interview from Austin, Texas, where he now calls home.
“I think we’ve got to a place now where we can sit back and just capture what’s happening right there, right then, and not overthink it and just let it be. And I think that’s how we sound the best. And that’s what we’ve done with this record.”
Besides his deep devotion to the kind of old-school country music Nashville hasn’t made in quite awhile, Boland says growing up, getting older and surviving life’s hardships influenced the songwriting and musicianship of “Rancho Alto.” On their last studio effort, “Comal County Blue,” Boland, 36, dealt frankly with his struggles with alcoholism on several songs. The day the 2008 album was released, the singer-songwriter underwent microsurgery to remove a potentially career-ending vocal cord polyp and then endured a long, trying recovery process.
“You’re just trying to always get better at what you do … and that’s writing songs that get to the heart of things and the heart of emotions,”and being able to contact those emotions and get ‘em out through your music,” says Boland, who will return to his home state for annual Thanksgiving weekend shows at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa and the Wormy Dog Saloon in Oklahoma City.
“I think they’re all stepping points. It depends on where you draw your songs from, of course. I do most of the songwriting, so it is going to reflect a lot of times what I’m specifically going through. But you always notice at the same time it seems in so many ways, even if it’s only metaphorically, the people around you are going through the exact same thing. It may be a little different but … it seems like we’re never really alone and the music ties us all together.”
In the great red dirt tradition, “Rancho Alto” shares stories of the common man. The album’s toe-tapping opening track, “Down Here in the Hole,” centers on a miner stuck in a cave-in, while the dancehall ballad “Between 11 and 2” reminds the unlucky in love “if you think you’re all alone, there’s somebody out there right next to you that thinks they’re just as alone as you.”
With “False Accuser’s Lament,” Boland retells the 1959 country epic “Long Black Veil” from the viewpoint of a witness, a poor farmer paid off to frame the innocent man convicted of murder.
While he wrote or co-wrote eight of 11 tracks on “Rancho Alto,” Boland closes the album with Checotah singer-songwriter Greg Jacobs’ “Farmer’s Luck,” a story song about a farmer whose land is taken by eminent domain and turned into a recreational lake. Boland also pays tribute to his red dirt roots with “Woody’s Road,” an ode to Woody Guthrie penned by the late, great Bob Childers.
“Growing up in Oklahoma, you can’t help but be influenced by that spirit of the hopefulness for the plight of the common man. That’s part of what the folks in Stillwater that coined the ‘red dirt’ term had in mind.”
In concert
Jason Boland & the Stragglers Thanksgiving weekend shows
When: Nov. 25.
Where: Cain’s Ballroom, 423 N Main, Tulsa.
Information: www.cainsballroom.com.
When: Nov. 26.
Where: Wormy Dog Saloon, 311 E Sheridan.
Information: www.wormydog.com.
-BAM
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