Here’s a switch — a singer from Tennessee who leaves the land of Jack Daniel’s, Graceland, and Dollywood to record country music. That’s Roger Wallace, who started his musical journey as a blues lover, and whose reason for migrating from Knoxville to Austin was to check out the city’s blues scene. Bringing along a borrowed tape of Hank Williams, however, made Wallace aware that the best country music has its own brand of soul.
It didn’t take long for him to become a convert and begin applying his forceful baritone and eclectic songwriting to “the white folks’ blues.” Now, three CDs of unrelenting twang later, Wallace is keeping the heartache-and-honky-tonk classic country alive. Call him retro if you must, but on his latest album, The Lowdown, Wallace sounds more like he’s maintaining tradition rather than reviving it.
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2003.