After our interview, Ray Wylie Hubbard and I grab some coffee across the street. He asks me what new bands I’m listening to, and I rattle off a couple — for whatever reason, it’s always a tough question to answer on the spot. Hubbard’s already got his answer locked and loaded, of course: The Bright Light Social Hour. He tells me to go on YouTube and check out the song “Detroit,” the same instructions he’ll give the audience at City Winery when he takes the stage in 90 minutes. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting myself into when first walked backstage to meet Hubbard, the 67-year-old outlaw country survivor. An elder statesman of the same scene that produced the likes of Waylon Jennings and Townes Van Zandt — one of the few who’d lived to tell the tales. What I found was a man who was more than willing to relate some of those gems, many still fresh in his mind as he puts the finishing touches on an autobiography due out next year. The man who, most famously, penned “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother” has always been a storyteller, a trait he’s been putting to good use as of late, creating some of the best music of his long career over the past two decades. And thankfully, the way he tells it, he won’t be slowing down any time in the near future.
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