ALBUM REVIEW: On ‘El Cabron’, Pug Johnson Cuts a Fun, Deviant Caper

If Townes van Zandt’s Pancho and Lefty got away with it, their lives might have ended up something like Texas singer/songwriter Pug Johnson’s outlaw, El Cabron. The titular character from his latest album, El Cabron, runs on swagger and split-second choices, often thriving in the liminal moments on the run living life hard.

Johnson opens the album with “Big Trains,” a classic, getting’ outta town number. With the second, and title track, he (at least in the video) quite literally struts up to white convertible 1970s Dodge Polara whose owner has left the keys in the ignition, (in a white suit coat no less) and drives off into the sunset. Thus begins a border town caper. The album unfolds in a halcyon haze of stollen moments as Johnson’s high rolling character dissects the line between hero and antihero.

Drawing inspiration from Texas best-known deviants, like the characters in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and Terry Allen’s Juarez, Johnson’s El Cabron (Spanish slang for “the bastard”) spends most of the album flirting with impropriety driven by a rakish disregard for order. Accompanied by a mix of Cajun, Tejano, Texas swing, and honky-tonk influenced sounds, his character escapes over the boarder into Mexico (“El Cabron”), dreams of life writ large (“Buy Me A Bayou”), falls in and out of love (“Believer,” “Hole In Me”), and kicks up his fair share of trouble (“Pipeliner Blues,” “Last Call (With Apologies to Terry Allen)”).

By album’s end, unlike many outlaws, El Cabron has learned a few lessons; he finds himself contemplating the future and armed with a few new adventure notches on his belt, he vows to make himself a better man. Shifting the album’s high-rollin’ tone to somber and introspective, on “Change Myself Today,” Johnson seems to step out of character speaking truth to anyone who’s ever wished to do better and do their part. He concludes with “Time Well Wasted,” a bar-room piano and guitar riff-driven farewell, which unfolds like an end-credit review of misadventures.

While it’s a thoughtful meditation on the human condition, offering a surprising number of insights from a character who we might not immediately identify with, El Cabron is also just plain fun. Blasting an upbeat album whose character considers consequences second is cathartic and a pleasant interlude from reality. In total, the album is a little John Prine, a little Townes Van Zandt, and a whole bunch of swagger and fun steeped in Texas country music lore.

Pug Johnson’s El Cabron is out March 28 via Thirty Tigers.