Texas via California

You have to admire Randy Weeks. He’s one country musician who left the sunny climes of Southern California (where he sang back-up on albums by such notables as Dwight Yoakum) to move to Austin, Texas in search of ….Well, it’s unclear what he was searching for: a folk authenticity, perhaps? But no one ever gets rich in Austin, not matter how talented (sorry, Alejandro). That said, Austin has a great music scene and if one were looking for collaborators and inspiration, Austin is the place.

Weeks’s latest disc contains a dozen well-crafted, laid-back country tunes. You can take the man out of the Golden State, but you can’t take the smoothness from the man’s music. Weeks’s music has a pop sheen that invites the listener to relax. However, the lyrics convey mixed messages in the best sense. On the title track “Going My Way”, he describes a list of women he has been with that shows an understanding that to get along with others often means not probing too deeply.  Or, as he points out on “I Think You Think”, he knows not everyone sees things the same way. Every song here has the potential to become a hit (George Strait, are you listening?) in the hands of a big name artist with some Nashville production, but in Austin, Weeks seems fated to be just another very talented singer songwriter.

• Multiple songs MySpace