“Introducing the world to the first proletariat, hillbilly, folk art honest persons concept album that transcends commodity!” artist and fiddler T.W. Rushing wrote me one morning while digging through this album, junking for lyrics to illuminate the cover and insert with his hands and pen, xeroxed and cut in the styles of Roy Finster and Norman Pettingill, “just don’t forget to spray paint the staples before you put it together.”  

Marshall Terry captured the songs with pedals he made, a 70s Neve console he rebuilt and a tape machine he saved from certain death.  No computers.  Mixed down with his ears and fingers.  I bartered most of the engineering, mixing and mastering fees by playing bass at his “Shaman Shack” a former reefer truck turned NBC remote feed truck, recast as a studio parked in a warehouse on Austin’s East Side.  

The full band tracks were cut June of ‘17 in the midst of a central TX heat wave. We couldn't all fit in the truck so we ran a snake out to the back corner of the stagnant warehouse lit with a few flood lamps, but no talkback mic to the truck.  We’d holler after takes, reviewing before we rewound over the track or kept it.  We only had 6” of tape left over at the end.  It’s all here on this record, ghosts and all.
 
Jody Suarez led me, Dan and Matt through 5 new songs over two evenings. I plugged my J45 into a tall amp Marshall had made through one of his White Rabbit Deluxe pedals and it just sounded right. Playing with these guys has always felt right.  

Lyza Blair and Charley Crockett were my neighbors on the east side and I had just recorded on Charley’s great “Lil’ G.L.’s Honky Tonk Jubilee” record, he’s The Hard Luck Kid in my mind and in his voice.  Lyza so deftly captured me in uneasy contempt at the current political and humanitarian crises in front of the hope just beyond the truck’s doors.   

I dogsat for Noel and Brennen when we were in and out of town with our old band, traded a week for the two songs we recorded here live in the truck.  Summer was passing through on tour, her voice lent with the passioniate yearning of my friends Wes and Hattie, who inspired “County Fair”.  Dylan is a guitar legend in the making and a friend who was new to Austin from Fort Worth, we were eating at a lunch counter when I asked him to play on this record, I had the catfish, he had a po’ boy.  Go find these great artists, they’re the lifeblood of new American roots music, art and photography and I’m happy to call them friends. 

I would eventually move to Fort Worth in the fall of ‘17, I was off the road and ready for a change.  The first month there I was spending 3 days a week back in Austin mixing this record with Marshall.  Nothing could come close to a more pure and honest time.  The least I can do is thank these artists, my close friends and especially Anita for supporting me through this whole process.  Some of the characters on this record are real, some are inspired, most are you and me.  We are where we find ourselves.  I hope you find yourself somewhere in “Radioville”.  

										-Simon Flory

Hard Luck Kid (feat. Charley Crockett & Dylan Bishop)

Flory now resides in Fort Worth, TX where he splits time between songwriting sessions locally and in Nashville, playing bass and banjo in bands and studio sessions, teaching and most recently working on a film to accompany his upcoming solo EP set to be released in 2018. Also: gardening, trail running, Larry Brown, the Davis Mountains, the incomparable love and support of his partner Anita, family recipes, tackling the Ghazal, native plants of TX, Earl Hines, mules, a nice hat, a decent pair of boots and a ten year old shirt to name a few other things.