Texas roadhouse bluesman Delbert McClinton will release Room to Breathe on September 24th. The album is a quick follow-up to 2000's Grammy-winning Nothing Personal.

"I've never put out a record one right after the other," McClinton says. "It's always been a couple of years in between. And the reason has always been I didn't have the songs. But I had a really good last five years of writing. They've just been pouring out."

All of the dozen songs on Room to Breathe were written or co-written by McClinton, and, despite the flood of new material, he still had plenty of anxiety going into the recording. "The first day we went into the studio, we were all expecting the worst, for everything that can go wrong to go wrong," he says. "But we spent three days in and got nine songs, and got 'em good. So we really got pumped about that, and so we went back in and did three more, and we finished it last week." McClinton says that the success of Nothing Personal, which in addition to the Best Contemporary Blues Grammy spent more than a year in Top Ten of the Billboard Blues Album charts, helped create a push for the new record. "We had a confidence," he says. "I think the fact that the writing started coming out gave me a whole lot of confidence. But until it's done, it ain't done. And you still go in ready to brace yourself for everything to turn into shit . . . because that happens sometimes. But we had a great three days and got more done than we ever thought we would. "

Among the tracks on Room to Breathe is "Lone Star Blues," which features a chorus of the Flatlanders (Joe Ely, Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore), Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Billy Joe Shaver, Marcia Ball, Kimmie Rhodes and Asleep at the Wheel frontman Ray Benson. "I know pretty much where everybody's hiding," McClinton says of the guest list. "It's a Texas song. Straight out of west Texas 1949."

As usual, a McClinton album features a handful of ballads, including the Billy Sherrill-influenced, string-laden "Everything I Know About the Blues (I Learned From You)" and "I Don't Wanna Love You Anymore."

"I'm still wondering if there's something I didn't do," McClinton says, laughing. "I like it, so at this point, it don't make a shit whether anybody does or not. But those that like it like I like it are gonna love it."

ANDREW DANSBY
(July 24, 2002)