Hayes Carll
7:30pm, Austin Ventures stage“One thing that Ray [Wylie Hubbard] always told me is it’s about the song,” Hayes Carll told the Chronicle after the release of his 2008 breakout, Trouble in Mind (Lost Highway). “People are going to get popular and then not popular, and if you’re in this for the long haul, it’s going to go up and down, but the only things that are going to last are the songs, and if you don’t have them, then it doesn’t matter how many T-shirts you sell this week.”
It’s a lesson the local songwriter has taken to heart, even as his star continues to rise behind his fourth album, this year’s KMAG YOYO (& Other American Stories). Like Hubbard, Carll unravels narratives and ballads that strike at the truth by looking at it askance, often with a wry wink or a keen eye for detail and unique personalities.
A military acronym for “Kiss my ass, guys; you’re on your own,” KMAG YOYO delivers some of Carll’s best songwriting, capturing the divisive and hard-times zeitgeist in ribald fashion on the title track, “Stomp and Holler,” and politically opposed “Another Like You.” Still, Carll sees the contemporary commentary less as politics than as an entry point to storytelling.
“It’s not really my strength to try and change people’s minds by lecturing them,” Carll notes. “I still want it to be fun and listenable and don’t want people to tune out. I think you lose half the potential effect that you can have because half the people going in aren’t going to give it a chance if they disagree with you politically. If you can just put things in a way that they’re willing to listen and let them think about it on their own, it’s more effective.”
This article appears in September 16 • 2011.
