Ray Wylie Hubbard says Reel 2 Reel 4 Real is likely his last album

Ray Wylie Hubbard says Reel 2 Reel 4 Real, his first studio album since 2022 and his 20th overall, is likely the last record he will put out. He is 79.

Most of it was made at Jonathan Tyler's studio in Texas with his own band, including his son Lucas on guitar, joined by friends such as keyboardist Bukka Allen and mandolin player Cody Braun.

The last two songs came from somewhere else. Mike Campbell of the Dirty Knobs, and of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, asked Hubbard to fly to Los Angeles and cut a couple of tracks at his studio, so Hubbard and Lucas went. The connection came through Ringo Starr, who handed Campbell Hubbard's phone number and told him to call.

The sound was the point. "I've always liked records where it's real guys really playing," Hubbard told Rolling Stone, naming the first Buffalo Springfield and the first Stones albums as the target. He handed the mix to Gurf Morlix, who has worked with Slaid Cleaves and Robert Earl Keen, and passes on Morlix's rule for making a roots record: take out the lip smacks and the coughs, leave in the stray noises and the pedal squeaks.

Hubbard's standing was built over 50 years, since Jerry Jeff Walker first covered "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother," and it has come back to him from Eric Church, Hayes Carll, Blackberry Smoke and Cross Canadian Ragweed. He describes it as validation that he can write these songs.

His method these days is observational. "She Plays Crazy Mama" was written on a whim after he heard J.J. Cale's "Crazy Mama" while recording with Campbell, and Cale's widow Christine Lakeland appears on the album. It arrives in a busy autumn for country and roots rock songwriters that has also produced Rayland Baxter's first album in four years and a new song from Willi Carlisle.