Joshua Hayes Carll comes by his rockin' Texas folk-country credentials the honest way: by studying the masters and playing too many shows in the rowdy bars and roadhouses of the Lone Star state. His gritty story-songs display a clever, wry sense of humor and reveal just enough of his soul to keep them real, earning him comparisons with Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Guy Clark; Hubbard and Clark, in turn, have written songs with Carll. "I always like writing with Hayes," Hubbard has said, "because he's fearless."
Raised by liberal parents on the outskirts of Houston, Carll strummed his first guitar at 15, about the same time he began writing — poems, short stories, songs, whatever. Later, rather than use his small-town Arkansas college history degree, he paid the bills with odd jobs like detasseling corn and selling vacuum cleaners door to door while he chased his muse all the way down to Crystal Beach, a brief ferry ride from Galveston on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Four years of performing nightly Merle Haggard and David Allan Coe covers in the Crystal Beach bars prepared him well for the only life to which he seemed suited.
Now three albums into a career that has seen his songs vigorously praised on both sides of the Atlantic, Hayes Carll has gained an increasing amount of national attention with each, including his latest CD, Trouble In Mind. Armed with well-crafted accounts of life just off the beaten path, he is considered one of the leading voices amongst the current crop of Texas songwriters.
Provenance: The Woodlands, Texas
Latest Release: Trouble In Mind (2008)
© 2008 Nigel Music Media LLC. Used by permission.
Hayes Carll
