I swear my algorithm’s been drunker than that Christmas chicken, because “Look at Miss Ohio” kept showin’ up on my feed like it was some shiny new release Nashville was fixin’ to brag about.
So tonight, out here on this chilly West Texas evening, fire pit cracklin’, hoodie pulled tight, I finally said hell with it—hit play.
And man… It wasn’t what I expected at all.
It’s all peace, love, open-sky hippie calm… the kind of song that feels like it’s got bare feet, a soft breeze, and maybe a sunflower or two stuck behind its ear.
Just Gillian Welch floatin’ through the speakers, reminding you that not every outlaw moment has to come with bar lights and heartbreak. Sometimes it’s just a soothing little tune that slows your pulse down while the flames dance like they’ve got all night to think about it.
Then I look it up— This damn song is from 2003.
Two-thousand-and-three.
My algorithm really said, “Hey man, let’s take Pancho back 22 years and see if he notices.”
But honestly? I’m glad it did.
Some songs feel brand new no matter when they were written, and this one hit that sweet spot between nostalgia and calm—the perfect soundtrack to a quiet night by the fire when life finally shuts up for a minute.
Benjamin Tod has built his name on the raw stuff—the kind of songwriting that sounds like it was carved straight out of bone and heartache. For years, fans came to him for the bruised truth, for the late-night honesty, for that unmistakable Lost Dog Street Band ache that always felt more confessional than commercial.
But on Dec. 5, Tod walked into the room with something different. Something meaner, groovier, and swagger-soaked. Something with sawdust on the floor instead of tears on the table.
“Hell I Have” isn’t just a new single.
It’s a pivot. A flex. A reminder that Benjamin Tod isn’t chained to any one style—he’s chained to the truth, and sometimes the truth shows up wearing a honky-tonk grin.
Produced by Shooter Jennings, the track comes stamped with that unmistakable Waylon Jennings DNA:
that low-end thump rolling like a stretched-out freight train, guitars twanging with outlaw mischief, a rhythm that dares you not to move, and a vocal performance that stays gritty without ever losing Tod’s soul. Shooter didn’t just sprinkle some “outlaw seasoning” on top—he built the whole damn thing like a tribute to the era when country music had steel bones and a black hat on its head. You can practically hear Waylon in the walls of this song: the looseness, the swagger, the barroom strut.
And here’s the magic:
Tod fits into that sound like he’s been waiting to wear it.
There’s still the weight of a man who’s lived through the dark and wrote his way out. There’s still the edge, the scars, the honesty. But now it’s riding alongside a groove that kicks like a mule, a sound meant for dancehalls, pool halls, and any Texas bar that still has cold beer and bad decisions on draft.
“Hell I Have” is a reminder that true artists don’t stay put. They evolve. They surprise you. They keep swinging. Benjamin Tod has always deserved respect.
But this track?
This is him stepping onto a bigger stage with his shoulders back, reminding country music that outlaw isn’t a costume—it’s a conviction.
If this is the direction he’s heading, then 2026 might just belong to him.
Looking back on the records, the roads, and the nights that stayed with me.
2025 was one hell of a year for music — the kind that doesn’t just play through your speakers, but moves into your bloodstream and starts living there. And when I look back, a few records rise above the rest like campfires burning bright on a long West Texas night.
Albums that will live in the canon.
Matt Moran’s The Ba’ar led the charge for me. A record rough as cedar bark and tender in the right places, the kind that feels like a man telling you the truth he didn’t want to say out loud.
Then came Colter Wall’s 1800 Miles — all dust, distance, and heartbreak stitched together with that ancient-sounding voice he carries around like an heirloom.
And Turnpike’s The Price of Admission may be their most lived-in record yet… full of scars, wisdom, and the kind of writing you only earn the hard way.
Vandoliers Life behind bars Took me back into the sunlight knowing damn well not everybody’s rooting for ’us But here’s the trick: We quit living for other people. Every song carries a tone of we survived you, and we’re still here.
Jason Isbell’s Foxes in the Snow capped off the list — quiet, cold, honest, and heavy in the way only Isbell can pull off. A winter album that finds the warm places in a man’s heart and sits there awhile.
Singles That Stopped Me in My Tracks
This year had its share of one-off punches too:
Gedda’s “Thick as Thieves” — a song so sharp it practically demanded an album around it, which he delivered with South of Mars.
Turnpike’s cover of Todd Snider’s “Just Like Old Times” — the kind of cover that wakes up every demon you thought you’d already sent packin’.
James McMurtry’s “South Texas Lawman”— dry as mesquite smoke and smart as a whip.
Best Concerts of the Year
I caught some unforgettable shows this year:
Ryan Bingham, burning hot as ever, Robert Earl Keen, returning like a long-lost uncle who still knows how to hold a crowd in his hands, Red Shahan, wild-eyed and wonderful.
But the night that will stay with me long after 2025 is gone was standing beside my wife and two of our grandkids, listening to Ray Wylie Hubbard howl, joke, stomp, and testify like only he can.
That wasn’t just a concert — it was a memory carved in oak.
If the music we love says anything about the year we lived, then 2025 was full of grit, grace, and damn good stories.
You know, kids… every now and then someone comes along who doesn’t just play music — they change the way the whole world hears it.
And yesterday, one of those folks left us.
His name was Steve Cropper, and some people said he was the greatest guitar player who ever lived. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at 36 on their big fancy list, but let me tell y’all something… numbers don’t mean much when your music lives in people’s bones.
Cropper was 84 when he passed, and he spent a lifetime making songs that still feel good on a Sunday morning or a slow drive home after dark. He played clean, simple, and honest — the kind of guitar that didn’t show off, it just fit. Like a well-worn pair of boots that always know where to step.
If you ever hear Green Onions or any old Stax soul song drifting through the house, that’s him. He helped Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett — all those giants — find their sound. Truth is, he made other people shine, and that’s a rare kind of greatness.
Steve Cropper did it first, and he did it right.
I just wanted you to know his name. Because good music — the real stuff — it doesn’t fade.
Rest easy, Mr. Cropper. And kids… don’t forget him. Some legends deserve to be remembered.
Merle dropped “If We Make It Through December” in OCTOBER like a man who knew his song would slow-burn its way into every cold kitchen, truck cab, and broken heart by Christmas. By the time December hit, the damn thing was #1 and America was cryin’ in their Folgers.
Then the album didn’t even come out until February, because Merle didn’t give a single solitary damn about “release cycles” or “content calendars” or whatever Nashville interns clutch their laptops over today. He just wrote the truth, released it when he wanted, and let the song do the heavy liftin’. Try pullin’ that off in 2025 Nashville.
Despite how deeply December is woven into its bones, “If We Make It Through December” was never meant to be a Christmas gimmick. Merle wrote it for a holiday-themed record he was piecing together, but the song immediately broke out of the seasonal box.
This wasn’t a jingle. It wasn’t a novelty. It was a working man’s blues dressed as a single father’s fear. Merle tapped into something bigger than holidays — he tapped into survival.
THE RELEASE THAT MADE ZERO MARKETING SENSE (AND ALL THE MUSICAL SENSE)
Single released: October 1973 Album released: February 1974 Show that timeline to a modern Nashville marketing team and watch their hair catch fire.
But Merle didn’t play the industry’s game. He played his own.
The song hit radio in October and did exactly what he expected: it clawed slowly into the hearts of the people who needed it most. By December, the whole country was holding its breath with him. After its October release, the single rose like a cold front creeping across the plains:
#1 on Billboard Hot Country Singles (December 1973) Held the top spot for four straight weeks Crossed over into the pop charts
It was one of Merle’s most successful singles ever — not because it was polished, but because it was true.
“If We Make It Through December” works because it isn’t wrapped in tinsel or coated in sugar.
It’s about: layoffs, cold paychecks, fear you can’t hide from your kids, pride that’s taken a beating, and the thin hope that things might get better when the calendar flips.
It’s the kind of truth you don’t forget, especially if you’ve ever watched a winter bill stack up while the thermometer drops.
Merle wasn’t writing hits. He was writing hard life, sung soft enough for the whole country to feel it. Half a century later, the song still lands like a reminder of what country music was built on.
Real stories. Real fear. Real hope.
Merle didn’t follow trends. He didn’t take advice from suits. He didn’t schedule releases around playlists or cross-promotional campaigns. He wrote a song people needed — and he let that song walk into December on its own two feet.
Nashville can try to bottle that magic, but they can’t recreate it. Not in 1973. Not in 2025. Not ever.
—Pancho’s Picks
Riding for the real ones, dodging the rhinestone pretenders.
“Catchy hooks and a sound built for backroads and barrooms.”
Yellow Scene Magazine doubled down, calling Duncan Coker “one of the freshest voices in Western Roots music.”
When two different corners of the Americana world start buzzing about a Colorado kid, well… that’s usually when this West Texas cowboy perks up, cracks a cold one, and gives the man a fair listen. Turns out they weren’t lying. Not even a little.
Coker’s new record, Roadside Attractions, rolls in like a long stretch of highway at dusk—equal parts dusty, honest, melodic, and wide open. His songs carry that rare mixture of sweetness and gravel, the kind that makes a listener lean forward like they’re hearing a story they once lived through but forgot how to say out loud.
I started my spin with “Rodeo Girl.”
Hell of a choice.
There’s a charm in that track, a little wink in the melody, like a bronc rider taping up old wounds before one more dance with danger. It’s catchy without trying too hard, tender without losing its swagger. The kind of tune that reminds you why we chase these storytellers down the Americana trail.
From there I drifted into “How to Love in El Paso,” and that one carried some real weight.
It’s got that quiet confidence, the slow-burn warmth of desert neon and long looks across a barroom table. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t beg. It just breathes. And somewhere in that easy honesty is a reminder that loving someone—especially in a place like El Paso—takes equal parts courage and calm.
Those two songs alone told me exactly who Duncan Coker is:
A writer with heart. A singer with grit and patience. A Western roots artist who understands that the road can break you and build you in the same mile.
Colorado may have raised him—but the sound he’s throwing out into the world?
Feels right at home under a West Texas sky.
So here’s my final word:
If you’re looking for a new voice to soundtrack your late-night drive, your back porch beer, your long haul down Highway 285 or that quiet moment when the day finally settles… give Duncan Coker a spin.
Pancho’s Picks Approved.
And something tells me this won’t be the last time he shows up around these parts.
I swear every year, the day after Thanksgiving, West Texas flips a switch and suddenly every radio station from Midland to Monahans is blasting Christmas music like it’s some kind of federally mandated torture program.
I hop in the truck this morning, turn the dial… and BAM — “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.”
Brother, it ain’t.
It’s 32 degrees, the sky looks like a hangover, and I’m wearing a coat I found in the back seat because I forgot winter existed.
And why do they play it 24/7?
Who asked for that?
Who voted for nonstop jingling like we’re trapped inside Santa’s anxiety attack?
Thank God for XM Radio — the only reason I haven’t driven straight into a cotton field just to escape the 800th version of “Jingle Bell Rock.” Streaming saved my sanity. Saved my marriage. Saved my dashboard from a fist-shaped hole.
A Pancho’s Picks Reflection on Matt Moran & the Five-Year Echo of a Sad Bastard Saint
I was driving that long straight stretch of 380 the other night, that long run between nowhere and Roswell New Mexico. And with Black Sheep spinning in the dash like it was still 2020 and the whole damn world is fallin’ apart, a man starts to think about things.
About the parts of himself he’s outgrown, the versions he’s buried, the memories that ride shotgun whether he invites ’em or not.
Out there, the world gets simple. It’s just you, the night, and whatever’s been weighing on your chest. And I’ll be damned —
I still can’t believe that record is five years old.
It doesn’t sound old. It doesn’t sound dated.
It sounds like it was recorded yesterday by a man sitting alone with his ghosts… or like it’s been with us forever, passed hand-to-hand between the hurting and the healing.
Somewhere past the state line, I reached that rise near Tatum — that lonely hilltop where the land stretches out like an exhale. Moran was singing about that brown El Camino with the cracked windshield, and suddenly I wasn’t just hearing a song. I was driving through every version of myself I’ve left scattered across these West Texas roads.
And right there, with the moon barely hanging on and the hum of the oilfield fading behind me, it hit me….
Black Sheep is meant for nights like this — when the road is dark, the moon faint, and the highway honest.
When you crest that hilltop near Tatum and finally admit you ain’t broken… you’re just a black sheep too. And that’s why the damn music feels like it was written for you.
I used to say Matt Moran felt like a brother I never met. But that ain’t the truth — I did meet him. Shook his hand. Looked him in the eye. Hell, his picture’s hanging on my wall like kin.
He’s struggled. He’s sober. He’s walked through more dark nights than most men ever see. And he sings like someone who found a way to make peace with his ghosts without pretending they weren’t real.
And When “Jenny” came on, the night around me went still — like the desert leaned in to listen. The way he sings her name isn’t performance. It’s a man sorting through ashes he once set ablaze himself. Every man who’s ever loved wrong hears himself in that song.
I drove slow after that, windows cracked just enough to let the night settle in. The pumpjacks, miles behind me now, still echoed in the back of my mind — a lonely lullaby of work and survival. The kind of sound that reminds you you’re part of something bigger, even when you feel alone.
By the time I pulled into the driveway, the engine ticked down, the wind had quit, and the last notes of the album slipped into the quiet. I stayed there a moment, letting the weight of it all settle.
Black Sheep ain’t just a record.
It’s a companion for the long drives. A lantern in the dark. A mirror that don’t judge. A soft voice in the cab saying, “You ain’t alone, brother. Not tonight.”
And Matt Moran?
Yeah, he’s a Sad Bastard Saint —
the kind who walked through fire and left a trail of songs for the rest of us to follow out of the smoke.
Out here where the desert never ends and the pumpjacks hum their lonely hymns, a man needs saints like that.
Most bands try to romanticize Texas. Treaty Oak Revival just tells it how it is.
West Texas ain’t a postcard.
It’s: busted knuckles payday Fridays split shifts 8 hours of overtime you didn’t ask for the hum of a compressor the sting of a divorce and the quiet miracle of making it through another week
It’s dust that sneaks into your boots and never leaves, Stripes coffee that tastes like burnt hope,and the long drive home on 191 with a sun that refuses to set before it blinds you one more damn time.
And that’s exactly why the title track, “West Texas Degenerate,” burns the way it does —
because Treaty Oak Revival didn’t shoulder it alone. They pulled in William Clark Green, a man who can write heartbreak like scripture and sing it like a barstool confession.
He fits the track like Red Dirt belongs in your veins —two generations of West Texas outlaws trading notes, comparing their scars, and telling the truth the way it actually sounds out here.
No polish. No pretty bow.
Just grit, dust, honesty, and guitars sharp enough to slice through all three.
That’s the magic of this whole damn album:it doesn’t try to make West Texas look good —it tells the truth about what it takes to live here.
It feels like home,
even when home is the kind of mess you’re still trying to sweep out of your life. Because anyone who’s ever worked a shutdown, sat alone in a dark truck cab, or tried piecing their life back together one paycheck at a time knows exactly what this record is saying:
Survival is an art form out here.
And somehow, Treaty Oak Revival turned that survival into a 14-track soundtrack for the beat-down,and the ones learning how to stand back up even when the world didn’t give them much reason.
This album ain’t an escape.
It’s a mirror.
And if you’re honest, you’ll see yourself staring back.
So here’s to the West Texas degenerates —
the ones who’ve loved hard and lost harder, the ones who’ve buried friends, dreams, and older versions of themselves, the ones who’ve prayed for rain and settled for dust devils spinning across a caliche lot.
Here’s to the hands still scarred from busted knuckles, to the hearts still healing from busted promises, and to the folks who keep waking up,
keep clocking in, keep trying again.
This record ain’t just music. It’s a reminder:
Out here in West Texas,
we might be degenerates…but we damn sure ain’t alone.
Not only did the Turnpike Troubadours just drop their cover of Todd Snider’s “Just Like Old Times,” but damn if it ain’t one of the greatest songs I’ve heard all year.
Not because it’s shiny.
Not because it’s hyped.
But because it’s honest.
Snider wrote that tune like a motel-room confession. A little funny, a little sad, a little dangerous — the kind of story you only tell when the night’s late enough and the silence is heavy enough to pull it out of you.
Turnpike stepped into that world like they’d lived it themselves. The fiddle aches. The steel sighs. And Evan Felker sings like a man who’s seen both sides of his own shadow.
It’s reverent without being precious — a tribute from one set of outlaws to the patron saint of all the misfits.
But this song… this one wakes things up in a man.
Listening to their version stirred up plenty of demons I thought I’d laid to rest. I’ve spent more nights than I like to admit under neon bar lights chasing things that were never meant for me. Women, drugs, chaos — whatever numbed the hurt for a little while. I prioritized the wrong things and broke the right ones. I caused damage to myself and to people who cared. I told lies, made excuses, ran from consequences until the law — and life — finally caught up to me.
Songs like “Just Like Old Times” don’t just entertain you. They remind you of the rooms you shouldn’t have been in, the roads you shouldn’t have taken, the parts of yourself you barely survived.
That’s the magic of Todd Snider: he wrote for the lost and the found. And that’s the magic of Turnpike covering him: they kept that flame alive.
I’ve talked a lot about music, memories, and mistakes — but let me be real with y’all:
I’ve been through the worst of times too. Not the “tough season, little stressed” kind of bad. I’m talking bottom. The kind of bottom where you can’t look at yourself, where the phone stops ringing, where the darkness starts whispering that maybe you’re done. I was on the verge of cashing it all in. I didn’t think there was anything left worth fighting for. But there was.
And somehow — through grace, through grit, through people who refused to give up on me — I found a way out. One small step, one shaky breath, one honest day at a time.
So if you’re reading this and you’re in that place right now, hear me clearly:
You are not alone. Not in your pain, not in your fear, not in your struggle. There are options. There are opportunities.
There are hands willing to reach for you, even when you can’t see them through the fog.
Stay one more day. Hold on one more minute. Your story isn’t finished
— not by a long shot.
If a stubborn, hard-lived soul like me can crawl out of the wreckage and stand here today — clean, grateful, hopeful, alive — then you can too.
Life is still worth living.
You just gotta stay long enough to see the next sunrise.
