Ray Wylie Hubbard - Reel 2 Reel 4 Real [Indie Exclusive]

Ray Wylie Hubbard wrote "Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother" in the early seventies and then spent about two decades being that guy. The late career has been vastly better than the early one, which is not something you get to say about many Texas songwriters. Reel 2 Reel 4 Real, his twentieth album, arrives in August 2026 and marks his return to his own Bordello Records after two albums on Big Machine.

Jonathan Tyler produced most of it at his studio in Austin, recorded live to tape with Hubbard's road band: Kyle Schneider on drums, John Michael Schoepf on bass, and his son Lukas on guitar. The method has not changed in twenty years and does not need to. Greasy open-tuned grooves, deadpan couplets delivered somewhere between a talk and a growl. "Cassette Mix Tape" opens on five minutes of exactly that. "El Diablo Esta Ganando" and "A Murder Of Crows" keep the gothic streak running. Mike Campbell produced the closers "She Plays 'Crazy Mama'" and "The Night," bringing a bit of Heartbreakers shimmer to the swamp, and the contrast works better than it has any right to.

The whole thing is lean and snarling, closer to garage rock than to Americana, and it sounds like a room full of people playing at once because that is what it is. At twenty albums deep, Hubbard has become the rare lifer whose newest record is a reasonable place to start.

Single LP on orange vinyl. On Bordello Records.