Hiss Golden Messenger :: Wah-Wah Cowboys, Volume II

I made the first Wah Wah Cowboys mix in 2009– almost ten years ago, which I cannot believe–as a way towards bit of mental calm after my wife and I had our first kid, Elijah, who is now nine years old and sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of hot chocolate; he’ll be as tall as me soon. At the time, I was looking to collect in one place some music that seemed to share a distinct shaggy, swinging aesthetic. The songs on the Wah Wah Cowboys mixes– I made the second one in 2011–are not of the bedsit loner folk variety, but rather are the most grooving cuts on dollar bin (back then, anyway) records by a bunch of also-rans, sweaty, past-their-prime Waylon acolytes, serious cocaine losers, or heads that were too deep or musical for mass consumption. Some of these artists, like Brewer & Shipley or Eddie Rabbitt, actually had successful careers. Others, like Phil Upchurch or Jesse Ed Davis or The Crickets or the great Augie Meyers, were sideguys on a sort of busman’s holiday.