The album is due this summer on Bismeaux Records/Signature Sounds Recordings
Asleep at the Wheel are honoring their home state of Texas with the forthcoming Riding High in Texas, due on August 22nd via Bismeaux Records and Signature Sounds Recordings. The ten-song collection features some of the best tracks about the 28th state from songwriters like Jimmie Rogers, Guy Clark, and Charlie Daniels—with some A-list collaborations with Lyle Lovett and Billy Strings.
“It’s been fifty five years for Asleep At The Wheel as a band, and fifty of them have been spent in Texas,” says the incomparable band’s founder and fearless leader, Ray Benson. “We are known worldwide for being a Texas band and playing Texas and Western Swing music, and it gives us great pride to carry this torch and responsibility.”
The project is the group’s 32nd album during its 55-year career. Since 1970, the Wheel has had over one hundred members come through. Riding High In Texas is an opportunity to introduce a new face in the band with fiddler and vocalist Ian Stewart joining Benson and company. Suggested to Benson by long-time Asleep At The Wheel band member, Danny Levin, Stewart fit right into the ensemble.
“Danny’s word was enough for me,” says Benson. “He knows the gig as much as anyone.”
The Texas-swing group shares the first single from Riding High In Texas, “Texas In My Soul.” Written by Ernest Tubb and popularized by Willie Nelson, “Texas In My Soul” was chosen for the project because it resonated with, in Benson’s words, “How we felt in 1974 when the band moved to Texas.” Ripe with everything that makes the Wheel the Wheel, “Texas In My Soul” is full of tTwin fiddles, steel guitar licks, and a crispy, clean piano solo, all underpinning Benson’s smooth delivery of the song’s classic lyrics: “It is there I know my place is. I see only smiling faces.”
Asleep At The Wheel will take the stage at The Heights Theater in Houston tomorrow night (Fri, June 13th).
- Riding High In Texas
- Texas In My Soul
- Long Tall Texan
- Texas
- Texas Cookin’
- Lonesome Pine Special
- T for Texas (Blue Yodel #1)
- All My Exes (Live in Texas)
- There’s Still a Lot of Love in San Antone
- Beaumont Rag
