Album Review: Jason Boland & The Stragglers – Comal County Blue

The problem with a personal record is that it can easily become esoteric–a pitfall Jason Boland & The Stragglers aren’t able to completely avoid on Comal County Blue. Boland wrote seven songs on his own and co-wrote four more. The final song not brandishing Boland’s name is the obligatory tune from the father of Red Dirt Music, Bob Childers–you’ll find at least one song by the late Childers on any respectable Stragglers album; in this instance, it happens to be a co-write with Randy Crouch and Layle Stagner on a song called “Outlaw Band.” It’s an apt title considering the constant comparisons between Boland and Waylon Jennings.

Indeed, songs like “Down Here on Earth” and “If It Were Up To Me” are too obscure or personal to make much sense to the casual listener and the production sometimes gets in the way, but overall, it’s a solid album, although it may not make for the best introduction to The Stragglers’ music.

A few songs revolve around Boland’s addiction to alcohol and his path to sobriety a few years ago, and with that subject in mind, it’s not a stretch to consider “God Is Mad At Me,” written with Jackson Taylor, to be about alcohol as well. Boland directly references the first of the Ten Commandments and he’s afraid God is mad at him because he worships someone (presumably a woman on a superficial listen) or something, but considering the entity is left unnamed, it’s applicable to any vice. “Bottle By My Bed” is about Boland’s redemption and serves as an introduction to his testimony, closing with an invitation for him to bear witness. It’s a clever way to approach the subject without becoming overbearing and no doubt, Boland has some tales to make his story compelling.

Since the release of his last album, The Bourbon Legend, The Straggers’ trailer, with their equipment and toys they had been collecting for kids, was stolen; an unruly fan tackled drummer Brad Rice at a show, breaking his foot; and when Comal County Blue is released tomorrow, Boland will be undergoing surgery to remove a polyp from his vocal chord, rendering him unable to perform for three months. The story about the jackass tackler was good enough for a verse in “Something You Don’t See Everyday,” a song bemoaning the inability to change or prevent the unfathomable events in life and featuring biting commentary mixed with humor on the war, “Poor boys doing rich men’s evil business/They don’t realize they’re blowing up a hearse/Your holy war is too deep for me to fathom/You get seventy-two virgins/Hoss you better pray I don’t get there first.”

Boland doesn’t shy away from social commentary or religion on Comal County Blue, but it’s usually done unassumingly, and if you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss it. In the title track, he laments the unfriendliness of visitors to Comal County during the summer months, singing, “But it’s the only place made colder/Around here in the middle of June/By endless string of strangers/Brought by the summer moon.” It’s this attention to detail that makes the album a pleasure to spin more than once, with new meaning potentially waiting to be discovered on each successive listen.

The topical “Sons and Daughters of Dixie” features the most direct commentary as it praises those who suffered the ravages of Hurricane Katrina and berates those in power who did nothing in the aftermath, going so far as saying, “One thing a southern man knows how to do is to rebuild.” Whether or not recalling Reconstruction is apt in this situation is debatable, but it lets us know that Boland considers the material he’s writing on a much deeper level than a cursory listen reveals.

Jason Boland & The Stragglers are amongst the upper echelon of artists in the Red Dirt scene and considering the thought Boland puts into his songwriting, it’s a position that Comal County Blue only reinforces.