Just to Love You

Pug Johnson grew up on the outskirts of Beaumont, Texas, listening to the multicultural soundtrack of a city flanked by Louisiana, the Big Thicket, and the Gulf Coast. Those influences would resurface on his solo records, coloring Johnson's eclectic version of American roots music, turning him into a country artist whose songs reach far beyond the genre's borders. Praised by Lonesome Highway for "exploring life's darker side in places... with high spirits and wicked humor," he hits a new peak with El Cabron, an album that finds the songwriter saluting his Texas roots while also delivering universal songs about the American everyman. The album's central character — El Cabron himself — reappears in multiple songs, running up bar tabs on both sides of the Mexican border, evoking personalities from Lonesome Dove's Gus McCrae to Hunter S. Thompson to the flawed protagonists in John Prine's catalog. Rooted in equal parts fiction and autobiography, that character becomes the unlikely hero of El Cabron, an album that follows its predecessor (2022's critically-acclaimed Throwed Off and Glad) in highlighting the wry, witty songwriting of a road warrior who has shared shows with Steve Earle, Eli Young Band, Midland, and Hayes Carll.