Randy Weeks

Photo by John Anderson

Going My Way ("Texas Platters," Jan. 23) boasts songs so good, new Austinite Randy Weeks hardly needs to play his trump card these days. To put a fine point on it, he wrote the only cover song on Lucinda Williams' tour de force, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, "Can't Let Go."

"I love Randy," enthuses Williams. "I'm a huge fan of his. I'm so glad he's finally getting his just due. I've championed his music for years and years. We knew each other from his Lonesome Strangers days. I opened for those guys when I first moved to California. My boyfriend then, Lorne Rall, played in the band with Randy, so we go way back. He used to send me tapes with songs on them, and that's where I got 'Can't Let Go.'"

Weeks recalls the exchange a bit different but with characteristic humor.

"I was playing it at [L.A.'s] Palomino one night, and she came up to me and said: 'I like that song. What is it?' About three years later, after 'Passionate Kisses,' she asked if I could send her a tape of it.

"Three years after that, it came out. It was the classic example of a platinum calling card. My confidence grew from that. So, I'm a songwriter now. Funny. Go figure."

The Minnesota native turned Texan in 2006, by way of a long stint in California; recently had the Los Angeles Times name him one of the artists to watch in 2009; and with his first locally cut CD now in stores, is unabashed about his attraction to Austin.

"It's the live music," he states. "Ever since I was a little kid, I was addicted to bands. If I heard a band around the corner, I'd have to at least go see what color the drum kit was. And Austin is so accessible! You can go out, hear music, and see people. It has a small-town element – go to the grocery, run into a couple of guitarists."

Weeks didn't run into him in a grocery store, but meeting Going My Way producer Will Sexton focused Weeks' Texas twang and California cool into loping Americana on the new album.

"I met Will and thought, 'Yeah, hmmm ... I could make a record here!'

"Between some old guys, some new guys, and people I didn't even know, we put it together. It was pretty refreshing, a spontaneous way to go. It was like, work this stuff up, go into the studio, and play it! I didn't labor over it."

CD release: Thursday, Feb. 26, Pangaea