Jubal Lee Young – Take It Home
God knows it has taken Jubal Lee Young a long enough time to find his roots, but find them he did. Right where his dad, Steve Young, left them. Now, I don’t think there is any musician who has put out the quantity and quality of work that Steve Young has who has received less. Less respect. Less money. Just less. They didn’t even give Steve the designation outlaw, though outlaw he certainly was. Hell, he was the poster boy for outlaw.
But Steve has done all right by himself and has made do, in spite of remaining virtually unknown while his long string of excellent albums continue to fall through the cracks. And Jubal, his son— well, Jubal is doing just fine too. After listening to his new album, I would say he was doing great, but good music does not always equal financial reward (as he should well know).
Jubal started out as a rock ‘n roller, you see. He preferred hardass rawk and wanted to burn the ballroom down at every turn and while he liked his dad’s country-flavored blues and rock, it wasn’t what he wanted to play. Slash and burn, that’s what he wanted. Slash and burn.
Slowly, though, kicking ass began to wear him down. Whether it was age or maturity or something else, Jubal started easing up on the pedal and slowing the big rig down. It was a slow process, but it was also a sure one. As he progressed, his music began taking on the slight twang of the outlaw. Oh, it wasn’t really noticeable at first because he kept the hard rockin’ edge too, but the music began changing and the attitude began changing and before he realized it, he too was an outlaw.
You know outlaw, right? It was that hard biting country sound that came out of Texas toward which Nashville turned up its nose. It was Waylon and Willie and Tompall and a handful of country boys who wanted to rock as much as drawl and to hell with Nashville. Steve Young was right there in its midst. He wrote “Lonesome Or’nry and Mean” for Waylon. He toured with Waylon. He WAS an outlaw.
Jubal remembers it. He grew up with it. And though he shrugged off the old outlaw duster during his rock ‘n roll years, he is an outlaw too.
You can hear it in three songs he recorded on his new album— songs also recorded by his dad. While “Just To Satisfy You” wasn’t a Steve Young song (it was in fact written by Waylon and a fellow named Bowman), it had Young’s depth of soul and Steve ended up covering it on one of his albums, entitled “To Satisfy You” in fact. Jubal rocks it just like his dad did, and rocks Steve’s own “Riding Down the Highway” and “Renegade Picker” just as hard. Hell, you have to listen close to even hear that it is NOT Steve, that’s how well he got it down.
Make no mistake, though, “Take It Home” is no cover project. Jubal lays out a string of Jubal Lee Young tracks as well and, man, has he grown! The roots really got ahold of that rock ‘n roll boy and, damn, I’m living in Outlaw Country again! You can hear the ghost of Waylon and Steve at every turn— “Angel With a Broken Heart” and “Don’t You Dare Love Her” and “Have You Met Me?” and “Why Does It Always Rain?” straight out of their playbook. This music has dust on its boots and we all know that Nashville hasn’t been dusty in years. This comes from the Deep South. And maybe it ain’t all rockin, but it’s all outlaw.
Which begs the question, can Jubal do what Steve could not quite do? You’ll have to wait for that one. Like Steve himself says, he ain’t dead yet. In fact, he sounds as good as ever and picks like the maniac he has always been. Two Young’s on the outlaw circuit. Sonofabitch. Makes me want to go outlaw myself. If only I knew how to play guitar.
Note: This review was originally posted on No Depression in 2012 but was no longer accepted in its original form.