Dallas Burrow’s Modern Day Vagabond is a quintessential Texas record. What else could one expect from an artist named after the region’s largest metropolis? Burrow hails from New Braunfels, and on this release, he is accompanied by a slew of notable musicians from the region.
This impressive lineup includes steel guitarist Lloyd Maines, Asleep at the Wheel‘s Katie Shore, Wonder Women of Texas co-founder Kelly Willis, the five-piece combo West Texas Exiles, and veteran Lone Star singer-songwriters Susan Gibson, Will Sexton, and Kelley Mickwee. Grammy winner Adam Odor (The Chicks, Silverada) and Mike McClure (Turnpike Troubadours) produced the record at Yellow Dog Studios in Wimberley, Texas. Burrow may profess to be a tumbleweed—or as the title track puts it, a “Modern Day Vagabond”—but this album suggests he is deeply grounded in the Texas dirt.
Dallas Burrow is a natural storyteller. He presents himself as a cowboy, a working stiff, a family man—just one of us. He croons in a gruff, conversational voice that suggests he’s seen enough of life to be trusted. Across 13 original, slice-of-life story songs and one poignant cover, he philosophically addresses what it takes to get by in this world. He offers no easy answers or explicit morals. Instead, he delivers raw observations of what people are willing to do to keep on keeping on, and how they occasionally find love and meaning along the way.
From a songwriting perspective, the best tracks (“Full Circle” and “Whole Different Angle”) begin with personal confessions and end with hard-earned transcendence. Their protagonists learn from their mistakes and benefit from whatever breaks they can get. The first-person narrators may have lost their way in the past to “sex and drugs and manic depression”, but they have ultimately learned what truly matters: faith, family, and community.
Because of this grounded maturity, leading with the track “Modern Day Vagabond” feels like an intentional, ironic twist. As both the opener and the title track, the song features a main character celebrating freedom from responsibility in the name of personal independence. However, you quickly realize he’s just been dumped, and being on his own was never his choice. The bouncy instrumental accompaniment brilliantly works in contrast to the fact that he defiantly shouts the lyrics as much as he sings them.
The other tracks vary widely in terms of style. The seductive “All I Want Is You”, sung with Kelley Mickwee, easily works as a smooth, Teddy Pendergrass-style groove. This contrasts beautifully with the powerful rock howls of “Underdog”, as does the twangy barroom waltz of “Memories”, which features vocals from his father, Mike Burrow.
Speaking of his father, Dallas Burrow closes the album with a cover of Townes Van Zandt‘s “Rake”. Mike Burrow and Van Zandt were legendary “blood brothers” who ceremonially shared blood in real life. Dallas performs the song on mandolin, carefully articulating the lyrics, backed only by Donny Silverman’s ethereal flute. It is a haunting tune filled with poetic imagery: “I covered my lovers / with flowers and wounds / My laughter the devil would frighten.” Like Burrow, Van Zandt was a proud Texan, and one presumes he would be pleased to see his music celebrated as part of this brilliant Lone Star fest.