Country music is changing in a multitude of ways right now. From the alternative twang of a burgeoning scene in South Florida to a cocktail of Bakersfield swing and old school bluegrass finding quarter in the Denver underground, saying that country is diversifying in a fashion some would have never dreamed possible would likely be too grand an understatement to make. For artists like Carlos Washington’s Steel Horse Swing, fitting into any box, let alone one created by music critics, isn’t nearly as vital as paying tribute to the Texas honky-tonk that gave birth to their sound in the first place, and that’s proven true in “Little Bit of Texas.” Their smoothest hit to date, “Little Bit of Texas” is a heck of a lot of fun to say the least.
URL: https://steelhorseswing.com/track/1772540/little-bit-of-texas
At first glance, the master mix in this track seems to favor the instrumental end of the harmonies a little more than I would usually prefer. However, in further listening sessions, I found that the tightly-wound intro essentially sets the course for a tension-killing ascent into the melodic oasis of the song’s second half. “Little Bit of Texas” is rather mathy for the current climate in country music – particularly on the left side of the dial – but despite its complex underpinnings, I think it’s distinctive from all of the other new country singles coming out this May for this very reason. Washington doesn’t need to copy someone else’s blueprint to find fortune here, and if he did, you’d never know it from his swaggering demeanor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuWH9ZC5Fcg
Conceptually speaking, “Little Bit of Texas” is as purebred American country as it gets, but I will note that it isn’t’ nearly as conservative in compositional structure as some of the songs it takes influence from are. There’s a lot of color in every component of this track – the percussion, the bass, the fiddles that accent the lightly-strummed acoustic guitars that dot the start of the song and even the timbre of Washington’s voice. He doesn’t have to get particularly showy with his poetic skillset to make a point about his adept ability to make us feel like we’re riding in the back of a pickup truck down I-45 on a smoldering summer morning; he’s got an entire band to back him up with majestic melodicism.
There is a ton of good country music out on the market right now, but for the select independent players who are making a name for themselves in the American underground today, Carlos Washington’s Steel Horse Swing is in a league of their own. For country enthusiasts, “Little Bit of Texas” is the perfect sample-sized offering of what Washington can fire up when he’s cooking with gas in the studio, but for his talents to be displayed in their best form, I think this is a guy we’d want to see on stage somewhere. He’s got a likeable energy that you can’t help but love right out of the box, and in this genre (or any other), that isn’t something you scoff at.
Loretta Kim