Vincent Neil Emerson takes "The Golden Crystal Kingdom" to Utrecht

Vincent Neil Emerson is an earthy and earnest country singer/songwriter. He follows the path carved out by such fellow Texan troubadours as Townes Van Zandt and Willie Nelson and maintained by Charley Crockett. Emerson's soft drawl complements his taste in country, whether he's singing hard country for a barroom or crooning plaintive ballads. He initially embraced his retro roots on such albums as his 2019 debut, Fried Chicken & Evil Women, and his eponymous Rodney Crowell-produced record from 2021. Emerson started to broaden his palette into Americana with 2023's Shooter Jennings-produced album The Golden Crystal Kingdom.

What counts as “classic country” music today is very much an eye-of-the-beholder sort of thing, but for a great many people, artists like Vincent Neil Emerson truly fit the bill. An Indigenous American with Choctaw-Apache lineage, Emerson is steeped in the Lone Star State singer-songwriter tradition. You can feel the tugging influence of everybody from Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark to Robert Earl Keen and Steve Earle as his easygoing twang affably tackles fun-loving honky-tonk rambles and more pensive folk- and bluegrass-leaning numbers with aplomb.

While Emerson’s 2021 self-titled album focused on the latter preoccupations, his latest collection, The Golden Crystal Kingdom, leans more toward the electric side. With Shooter Jennings behind the board and keys and with a slew of the producer’s favorite session players along for the ride, including pedal steel guitarist Jon Graboff and electric guitarist John Schreffler Jr., there’s a steady tangle of instrumentation throughout the album providing a marvelously full-bodied sound. From the honky-tonk confessional title cut to the Texas roadhouse blues of “Hang Your Head Down Low,” there’s a seamlessness to the band’s playing that makes them feel more like a seasoned road crew than a set of hired hands. These session aces also end up taking Emerson to some of his loudest and most rollicking moments to date with the Crazy Horse stomp of the gun violence rumination “The Man from Uvalde” and the surging storm that closes the ancestral prayer-cry of the closing “Little Wolf’s Invincible Yellow Medicine Paint.”

Vincent Neil Emmerson will share the bill with Kassi Valazza this summer in Utrecht:

13/08: Utrecht, NL - TivoliVredenburg