If Jason Boland sounds as if he’s holding up a mirror to his quarter-century-plus career in The Last Kings of Babylon, it’s because he’s feeling all kinds of introspective these days.
“As a songwriter, I have found that — for bands that record and write most of their own music — if the album doesn’t have some great force behind it, like a concept record, then it’s just what you’re going through,” Boland tells Rolling Stone about his 11th studio album. “It’s where you are in your life at the time.”
But if Boland sounds fresh and recharged in his music on The Last Kings of Babylon — defiant of the constraints, perceived or real, that he and his independent Red Dirt contemporaries have long felt — it may just be that country music is finally ready for Boland. Nearly every force driving the current renaissance in country music is one that Boland, a native Oklahoman-turned Texas Hill Country transplant, embodies so thoroughly that it cannot be construed in a buzz word.
Authentic? Boland has been writing his own music since before he formed his band the Stragglers in 1998 in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where he lived with Cross Canadian Ragweed frontman Cody Canada as well as Stoney LaRue and a collection of young musicians. They rented a yellow house just outside the campus of Oklahoma State University and pushed one another as players and songwriters — so much so that “The Yellow House” is now a landmark in Red Dirt lore for the music created there.
Traditional? Rarely has Boland recorded or toured without a steel guitar and fiddle. He mixes ballads with waltzes and hard-driving two-steppers and delivers them with a baritone voice that commands attention. When these qualities were out of favor in country music for the first two decades of his career, Boland was unapologetic. Now that the likes of Zach Top and Braxton Keith have revived such a sound, Boland suddenly seems made for the moment. When he sings, “Every generation has it figured/then in the middle of the game/the rules have changed,” on “The Next to Last Hank Williams,” it’s impossible to imagine Boland is referencing anyone other than himself.
“That song started out kind of talking about country music in an inter-connected world where you may live out somewhere rural, but what does that really have to do with country?” Boland says. “We’ve heard what pop country’s answer was to that. It was this cartoonish version with pickup trucks, beer, blue jeans and dirt roads. Then, Americana split down this other way where you had a western shirt and bandana and double bass, and you were making cowboy music. Well, we’ve always just sat there asking, ‘What’s valid and cool in country music like it was when Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle hit?’ They were different artists, pushing country and folk music in interesting ways. ‘Next to Last Hank Williams’ started with that dichotomy, and then it just became a tune about independent artists who go out there and just play.”
Boland says it’s also a song about lifer musicians who play non-mainstream country in music-first venues from Knucklehead’s in Kansas City to the Tractor Tavern in Seattle.
Boland is one of them, as well as a forefather of the Red Dirt genre. Long before the Turnpike Troubadours became its torchbearers, selling out arenas and headlining major festivals, they spent the better part of two years opening for Boland. Before Ragweed’s 2010 breakup, no other band opened for them more than Boland. Ragweed’s impending reunion in Stillwater next month at the four-night Boys From Oklahoma blowout will feature Boland on the bill — along with Turnpike, LaRue, and the Great Divide.
“A painting is up in a museum, and you can go look at it a million times. It’s cool, but it’ll always be the exact same painting. An album is the same thing. But, with live music, you get to watch this art happen again, and it’ll always be a little bit different,” he says. “The Red Dirt scene was so involved with the sake of the song, in the words of Townes Van Zandt, that it is mind-blowing how commercially successful it got.”
A few days before The Last Kings of Babylon hit the streets and streaming services, Boland was informed that he will be enshrined — along with Ragweed, LaRue, and the Great Divide — into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame during April’s Stillwater concerts. With Turnpike having received the same honor after their 2022 comeback, all five bands on the Boys From Oklahoma lineup will be members of their home state’s hall of fame.
“Everyone here has been watching you for a while, and it’s time to get this done,” Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame executive director Tony Corbell told Boland when informing him of his selection, giving a nod to Boland’s consistency as a Red Dirt troubadour.
The Last Kings of Babylon features 11 tracks. Boland wrote or co-wrote eight of them. The remaining three are covers that hold special places in his heart. “Drive” is a cover of a Jason Eady, Jamie Lin Wilson, and Kelley Mickwee song. “Ain’t No Justice” was written by Randy Crouch, a Red Dirt founding father and mentor to Boland. And Jimmy LaFave’s “Buffalo Return” is the last cover on the record. There are also a pair of rare-for-Boland writing collaborations, one with Adam Hood on “One Law at a Time” and another with Mando Saenz on “Irish Goodbye.”
“I’m a weird writer,” Boland says. “I really respond to the muse. I don’t practice write, and I don’t write anything that I don’t think I would record, although I’m moving past that now. I don’t co-write a lot, but I could tell that if I threw Mando or Adam an idea, that was all they would need.”
Boland points out that “One Law at a Time” has historical significance to his band. “It was the oldest rule in the Stragglers, and we got it from Scott Evans,” Boland says, referring to another long-time Red Dirt songwriter. “He told us when we started to only ever break one law at a time.”
On the heels of 2022’s The Light Saw Me, a Shooter Jennings-produced concept record about alien abduction, Boland turned his attention nearly immediately to this new project. He was joined in the studio by Stragglers founding member Grant Tracy on bass and Nick Gedra playing fiddle and mandolin. Three more Stragglers — drummer Jake Lynn, keyboardist Aaron Bair, and guitarist AJ Slaughter — played on The Last Kings of Babylon but left the band in the time between studio and release. The most notable part of the recording process was Boland’s return to producer Lloyd Maines, who turned the knobs for his 1999 debut, Pearl Snaps.
“I don’t think he had to work as hard on us,” Boland says of Maines. “I think we’ve come far enough that he could sit back and really just steer the ship.”
Boland is already touring heavily in support of The Last Kings of Babylon, with headlining dates stretching into July across Texas and the Midwest. And such is the case with independent artists who have their entire lives to write their first album but roughly 16 months to write every subsequent one, he’s already got his eyes and ears out for the next batch. His hall of fame selection reminded him of his longevity, but his approach will remain unchanged.
“It’s humbling, flattering, and embarrassing,” Boland deadpans. “I still feel like I’m in the middle of it, creating stuff. I don’t feel post-Stragglers. I still feel like I’m going into the garage to rehearse every day.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose third book, Red Dirt Unplugged, was released in December 2024 via Back Lounge Publishing.