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.
