While I’m sure everyone’s having fun wearing skinny jeans in the desert heat, paying $18 for a bottle of water, and inexplicably wearing Indian headdresses at Coachella, the best show out West this weekend will easily be Brian Wright, Sally Jaye, and Brother Sal’s Hank Williams Tribute show at Zoey’s in Ventura. Obviously there aren’t any video clips from this show, since it hasn’t happened yet, so I went ahead and used that one of Brian and Sally doing “Stormy Waters,” to give you a digitally compressed glimpse of what these two can do together. They give me that feeling I suspect other people get in church– the good feeling, not that one you get when the collection plate comes around and you’ve only got a five dollar bill and no cigarettes.

Brian’s just back from a really successful European run over the past few months. Rumor has it, he’s doing an acoustic set off his new album House on Fire before the Hank Williams tribute starts. If I manage to stay sober enough to remember the details, I’ll write it up next week, but I wouldn’t count on that.

Should be a hell of a show… or you can head up to Coachella and pay $300 to see a bunch of musicians performing on their laptops. Your call.

From what I can tell, this song’s about moving to LA, yet in the video, Austin Hartley-Leonard avoids the classic shot of the soon-to-be-hooker stepping off the bus with a suitcase in her hand, a twinkle in her eye, and a horrible series of disastrous decisions in her near future.

Hell, there’s not even a discernable trace of regret in this song. Austin doesn’t even mention the smell eeping out of your Armenian neighbor’s apartment in East Hollywood as he makes some version of prosciutto with the cured flesh from the top of a goat’s head. It’s not your typical song about LA, and it’s not played by your typical LA musicians.

With the banjo and acoustic support from Matt Ramsey, Austin taps into the sound of the classic optimism of moving to California from years past. It’s not about a shiny new set of headshots, it’s not about fakin’ it till you make it, it’s not even about your cousin’s friend from New York City that does blow with Michael Bay’s assistant until thing’s get awkward and he pulls his dick out poolside at the Standard every Tuesday night. It’s about opportunity. For Austin, a lot of that opportunity has come from playing with the extended family of musicians that are in and around the Waco Tragedies. It’s not a sound and scene you would expect to come from the blackened and clotted heart of Hollywood proper, until you witness it yourself and realize it couldn’t happen anywhere else.

Of course, I’d be remiss, if I didn’t specifically call out Brother Sal for bringing the good ol’ Whorehouse Gospel sound on piano. Here’s a clip of Austin and the guys doing their thing together at the Hotel Café. Now imagine it without shitty digital compression, or better yet, come feel it this Wednesday night.

Some albums are better than others, and the odds are, this one’s better than most of your others. Describing Brian Wright isn’t easy. If you compared him to other musicians, he’d probably never sleep again from the crushing pressure of living up to the labels of legends. Plus, so many of the audible influences on this album go back before artists’ names were known, back before people owned songs—when music was just an expression of love, hurt, celebration, and morning—before music was a business, when music served a purpose.

If you had to label it, I guess you’d call it Southern-alt-country-billy-gospel-rock-folk-icana-grass-& blues, but that’s a stupid fucking name. So think of it more like “Being There” if Jeff Tweedy was a 200 year-old black man, yet still almost impossibly true to the original Outlaws. Yeah, it’s wild.

Brian recorded his previous album Blue Bird with his band the Waco Tragedies. It’s amazing, and quite frankly, the Tragedies are my favorite band in town, and that’s saying something, because we don’t exactly live in some perma-dark, rural Alaska township without a guitar store. Everybody plays in LA, but for my money, these guys are the best here.

When I first heard Brian wasn’t doing this album with the Waco Tragedies, I was a little confused, but when you hear it, you’ll know why he took the exhaustive and near-obsessive task of playing almost all the instruments himself like an old-timey delta savant: it’s perfect. There are a lot of great ways these songs can be played, but this is exactly how they had to sound together on this album and not one note different.

House on Fire is the kind of album that deserves to be listened to on a serious set of speakers. It’s got some amazing yet subtle complexities and intricacies that make me want to launch into an Ol’ Man Grumbine rant about how kids these days miss half of what’s going on listening to music on those little, shitty, white, included-in-the-box ear plugs. Don’t get me wrong, the melodies and rhythms and the warmth and earnestness of Brian’s voice would make these songs sound great on a ’73 Chrysler factory-issued AM radio, but there are some badass arrangements and instrumentation that you would be a jackass for passing up.

A lot of people would breakdown an artist like Brian and comment on his abilities as a singer, songwriter, and musician, but you can’t separate the three. Each feeds into the legitimacy of the other and that combination makes him sound so pure and convincing that when he plays “Maria Sugarcane” you want to nudge your buddy next to you and say “hey, ummm, he didn’t really kill his brother to steal his wife, right? I mean, I know it’s totally justifiable because his brother was beating Maria and all, but still, he didn’t do it right? He doesn’t seem like a killer, but, damn, you heard that, right?” And of course, Brian didn’t kill anybody, but his story telling is so sincere and perfectly supported it’s hard to tell.

All that being said, the handful of other musicians who contribute to this album manage to blend in seamlessly while also elevating the sound. Sally Jaye sings like a fucking angel. There’s no other way to say it—she sounds like something holy. The spirit and soul she puts into every note compliment Brian’s voice so naturally that you start to think predestination isn’t such a far fetched idea. These two were meant to sing together. Apparently they recently recorded a Gospel album together in an old church in North Carolina. It hasn’t been released yet, but every time I even think about it, I get giddy and grin like a stoned Cheshire cat.

I realize that if you’re not familiar with Brian Wright, some of this may sound a bit hyperbolic, but spend some time with this album and a good set of speakers, and tell me I’m wrong. Just put it on repeat, then start and finish a 12-pack of beer or a bottle of whiskey, maybe both. Before you’re done, you’ll be howling along, waving your arms, pointing in agreement, and falling over when you try to dance. Or better yet, go see him live. He’s touring the UK and Europe now, so this is album will have to hold you over until April, but fortunately, it can.

Stand Out Tracks: Striking Matches, Blind April, Live Again, Accordion, Mesothelioma, Mean Ol’ Wind, The Good Doctor, Still Got You, Rich Man’s Blues, Maria Sugarcane, Pretty Little Pennies, Had Enough, If You Stay, and Friend.

Now go get it.

It’s like someone locked a badass gospel choir director in a room with the illegitimate road children of the Allman Brothers Band and handle of whiskey, a carton of cigarettes, and a plastic baggie of something rather, then said, “do whatever seems natural,” and they did.

Brian Wright and the Waco Tragedies and their extendedfamily of musicians are one of the reasons I actually love living in Los Angeles as an expatriated Southerner. Hollywood is about bullshit. And I don’t mean that in a bitter, holier-than-thou, sitcoms-with-laugh-tracks-suck, kind of way, but quite literally, Hollywood is about faking it. Film, TV and Radio are built on faking things in front of cameras and microphones for a few minutes at a time. It’s just the point. And I don’t need to explain to you how it trickles down— you’ve seen Entourage.

But Brian Wright and the Waco Tragedies are real, and they’ve carved out a really cool world of their own in Hollywood proper, far from the hoards of anorexic, scene-searching girls, two Vicodin and four Sea Breezes deep, in line outside of whatever club the Hills producers are desperately trying to wrangle a geeked-out Justin Bobby and convince him to read at least one line for every four he blasts. Hollywood is paradise fallen, but even after paradise falls, it leaves some pretty fucking awesome remnants.

Brian and the Tragedies are putting out another album soon, but in the mean time, if you don’t own Bluebird, it’s your loss. Really, it is. I’d be willing to say it’s one of the best albums you don’t have. And if you haven’t seen them live, well , you must be sadomasochistic, because, man, you’re really dicking yourself over for no good reason there. Jesus Christ— treat yourself right and go get the damn album