The song appears on their forthcoming album, Riding High In Texas
In their continued half-century celebration of being a Texas band, legendary Western swingers Asleep At The Wheel just released the title track of their upcoming album, Riding High In Texas, out on August 22nd via Bismeaux Records and Signature Sounds Recordings. Written by a fellow Americana legend, bluegrasser Peter Rowan, “Riding High In Texas” features Ian Stewart on lead vocals on a quick and twangy version of the song that originally appeared on Rowan’s 1980 LP, Medicine Trail. And with a nod to the bluegrass world to which Rowan’s contributions are many, the Wheel’s fearless leader, Ray Benson, extended an invitation to modern-day superstar Billy Strings to come pick his guitar on this new version.
“Love everything about this song,” says Benson of the band’s latest single. “It also made for a great title for the record. Ian can yodel and has Billy Strings play guitar on it…took it to a whole new level.” “Let’s go riding high in Texas in my mind / Said sometimes I feel I gotta leave this crazy world behind,” Stewart sings in the song’s refrain, backed with jubilant harmonies and surrounded by the signature pedal steel and fiddle licks that have kept fans returning to the Wheel for more than five decades now. And that bluegrass flatpicking from Strings gives the whole “Riding High In Texas” experience just that much more excitement. “We’ll ride so high in Texas / We’ll be riding high in Tejas in the mornin’”
The “Riding High In Texas” music video finds Stewart, the Wheel’s newest member, picking and singing on horseback through the streets of Austin, intercut with slow-motion saddle bronc riders and full band performances from Dallas’s legendary Longhorn Ballroom and Benson’s recording studio in Austin Texas; a perfect visual accompaniment to the Wheel’s new Lone Star-centric album and the song from which its title was born.
The song follows the previously released singles, “Texas In My Soul” and “Texas.”
Asleep At The Wheel will take the stage this Friday, July 25th, at the Waco Hippodrome Theatre in Waco, Texas. Additionally, Ray Benson is part of George Strait’s Strait to the Heart benefit concert on July 27th to raise money for Vaqueros Del Mar Texas Flood Relief Fund. On August 9th, the band will be officially inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame.
