Reel 2 Reel 4 Real (Preorder)Ray Wylie Hubbard is still making stab you in the back alley with a shiv rock & roll at nearly 80 years old. His latest album, Reel 2 Reel 4 Real, is meant to be played loud. Real loud. Its not just lean and mean but snarly and downright punchy; primer grey Texas garage rock in the proud tradition of the 13th Floor Elevators, Mouse and the Traps, and the True Believers. Over the course of his long career Hubbard has written boatloads of richly poetic,

The River Bed

Ray Bonneville - harmonica

and record label president

A Life … Well

” which became one of the defining anthems of the entire progressive country era after Jerry Jeff Walker recorded it on his classic 1973 album ¡Viva Terlingua

what in the world could have possibly provoked Hubbard to lay down his beloved guitar long enough to not just reflect back on his past

and rejuvenated Stevie Ray Vaughan in a commitment to the long road to recovery

But its grooves cut just as deep in digital form

along with profundity and poetic beauty in spades that will read as revelatory to diehard fans of his music as it will to Hubbard neophytes

This River Runs Red

an initially deeply skeptical Hubbard finds God

for Hubbard himself