It was during the 2011 release of their fourth full-length studio album, The Reckoning, when I discovered the music of NEEDTOBREATHE. They had just finished a two-year tour promoting their 2009 album, The Outsiders, and were coming into their own as an Americana-style rock ‘n’ roll band.
At the expense of being weirdly personal, I distinctly remember the moment I first heard them because a couple of the songs on that album spoke to particular challenges I was dealing with at the time.
While I don’t have any real criticism for their music today, I admit I mostly lost interest when their style and sound became more mainstream. The aspects of their music that had arrested my attention at that time had to do with the fact that aside from maybe Bob Dylan and U2, I wasn’t aware of many Christian artists who were making really interesting art.
To fully unpack what I mean by interesting would require a lengthy article so let’s just go with Horace’s axiom of “delightful and enlightening.” My point being, when I first encountered NEEDTOBREATHE, they had a unique sound and a poetic voice speaking to the perennial human issues that arrested my attention. That is the kind of band and music I find interesting.
Along the way, I have come across (or have been introduced to) a few other bands—and not all Americana rock ‘n’ roll—that I have found equally interesting in the same manner, but not too many.
Enter Blue Water Highway and their newest album, Year of the Dragon. The album is self-described as “an homage to Southern Gothic authors such as Flannery O’Connor,” with songs that deal “with the spooky and disturbing subject matter one might expect from such a song—but with a little twist at the end.” They had my attention at “Flannery O’Connor.”
Blue Water Highway is an Americana folk-rock band based in Austin, TX that blends “modern and traditional sounds to create something timeless and familiar, yet fresh and original.” For example, the second song on The Year of the Dragon album, “Natural Man,” “creeps in as track 2, heavy-footed and sinister [sounding] like the unholy child of a Spaghetti Western and an Alfred Hitchcock film.”
Reminiscent of G. K. Chesterton’s observation that, “Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten,” the band explains that this newest album is meant to show us “all the things that happen when the dragon (i.e. evil, chaos, fear, etc.) comes to town.”
While many of the songs on the album remind me of Proverbs 13:15 (Good understanding giveth favor, but the way of transgressors is hard), and one song literally speak of Job’s commentary that “man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward,” I think their final song on the album, Morning Glory, reminds me that even for those who have been “too long in the weeds,” “there is something more in store.”
For what it’s worth, even if Americana Folk Rock is not your jam, I doubt you’ll be disappointed by giving their album a listen at least one time through.
Here is the music video for “Natural Man.” You can listen to the entire album on Apple Music, Spotify, or any of the usual music platforms.
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