Red Shahan has covered a hell of a lot of ground in the three years since the release of his debut, Men and Coyotes. The red-headed troubadour with the lonesome howl and penchant for somber portraits of busted boom towns and gritty, white-knuckled anthems has built a loyal audience the old-fashioned way: organically, from the ground up. His new album Culberson County (Thirty Tigers) is proudly rooted heart, mind, and soul in the West Texas earth from which he sprang. And yes, he’s still got a thing for coyotes, hearing in their wild cries not just the music of wide open spaces, but a defiant note of stubborn resiliency that speaks to his own instincts as a hardscrabble independent artist compelled to write about the all-too-often unsung — and unseen.

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