Since releasing their debut album in 2020, Texas group The Wilder Blue (formerly known as Hill Country) has forged a distinct identity by blending Texas country sounds with lush, five-part harmonies. For their fifth album, Cinco, which came out Aug. 28, the group was eager to experiment with a new approach to album making–one that never strays from the group’s essence, but expands their sonic palette.
The group’s lead vocalist Zane Williams, along with bandmates lead guitarist Paul Eason, drummer Lyndon Hughes, bassist Sean Rodriguez and multi-instrumentalist Andy Rogers, augmented their own tight-knit musicianship by inviting outside players into the recording process. Hughes produced the album.
“We were toying with the idea of getting an outside producer, but then we finally decided to look at getting some outside players [instead], so we started calling guys in the Texas music scene,” Williams tells Billboard of working with trusted musicians such as fiddle player Steve Auburn, steel guitarist Harrison Yount (known for his work with Cody Johnson), and keyboardist Travis Bishop.
For nine days, they recorded together in the Texas border town of Tornillo at The Sonic Ranch. “I told them, ‘Look, for the next nine days, y’all are honorary members of The Wilder Blue. Your feedback is just as welcome as everybody else’s – let’s just have fun and make the best music we can,’” Williams recalls.
The harmony-drenched, songwriting-driven influence of groups like the Eagles has always been prominent with The Wilder Blue. In 2023, they even teamed with stadium headliner Luke Combs for a rendition of the Eagles’ “Seven Bridges Road.”
Much like the Eagles, The Wilder Blue has in the past turned to songwriting partners, such as their frequent work with Brent Cobb on The Wilder Blue’s 2023 album Super Natural, taking inspiration from the Eagles’ work with writers/artists including JD Souther and Jackson Browne. On The Wilder Blue’s new album, songwriter Phoenix Mendoza contributes three songs, including the solo-written “Last Chance for Dancin.’”
“[The Eagles’] Don Henley and Glenn Frey were Hall of Fame songwriters, amazingly talented dudes, but even with that being the case, they recorded songs by their talented friends,” Williams says. “So I always wanted to do the same thing, take the best of what I write and combine it with the best of people that are in my musical community. Phoenix has that Laurel Canyon kind of vibe and really understands harmonies. We invited him to fly to that writer’s retreat and write with the band and he ended up with the most songs on the finished project.”
Mendoza also co-wrote the album’s opener, “Sinners and Strays,” which has a cinematic, Western feel as it nods to the group’s band-of-brothers sense of camaraderie.
“We were doing a songwriting retreat last fall, writing for this record, and I was going to co-write with Charlie Stout and Phoenix,” Williams says. “I look at the Wilder Blue as we’re kind of that old-school harmony band that you don’t see too many more of these days, or at least not as many as there used to be in the past. I think about the Eagles and the whole harmony groups from the ’70s era, The Marshall Tucker Band and [then] a bunch in the ‘90s, which is where I fell in love with country music, Restless Heart, Alabama, Diamond Rio, Sawyer Brown… I wanted to write a song about brotherhood and camaraderie and doing this together. I had seven solo albums before this and I think we’re just better together and it’s more fun doing this together. It’s kind of using that cowboy way of life as a metaphor for what we do.”
The album’s eclectic feel includes a cover of Bruce Hauser and The Sawmill Creek Band’s “Wild Western Windblown Band,” originally released in 1979, and a collaboration with ‘90s country mainstay Tracy Byrd on the Williams-written “Texas Women.” Williams had opened for Byrd when he was a solo artist, prior to forming The Wilder Blue.
“I kind of already knew him, and I host a song swap, listening room kind of gig every month in McKinney, Texas, and he had come out and done that with me,” Williams says. “We originally recorded ‘Texas Women’ with just me singing it and when we were listening to a rough mix of the song, it occurred to me that we didn’t have any duets on it. I thought someone could theoretically sing the [song’s] lines of the boss man, but it would need to be someone older than me and legendary. I have always been a Tracy fan, so for me, it was cool that he’s got a new song out there and we can be part of it.”
As with previous projects, Cinco also features multiple solo writes from Williams, most notably the 10-song project’s closing song, “Only the Years,” which Williams calls “the most autobiographical song on the album.”
“I was driving the bus late one night, as I do. A lot of times, if we have to drive through the night, there’s two or three of us that don’t mind staying up late, so I’ll be driving at two or three in the morning. I thought about how I’ve been doing this a long time — the band’s fifth album, but I had seven solo albums before it. I wanted to write a song that only a mature person could write, and that turned into ‘I’m on the other side of many adolescent fears,’ and it was off to the races.”
The Wilder Blue has been among a collection of groups, including The Red Clay Strays, 49 Winchester and Treaty Oak Revival, leading a revival in country rock bands over the past few years.
“The cycles catch up — and eventually, if you’ve got a certain thing you’re good at, that will come back in style,” Williams says. There’s still not a ton of real harmony groups, but maybe we’ll inspire a bunch of new people to do the harmony thing. There’s a lot of real serious guitar pickers these days. And you do miss the Merle Haggards or the Glen Campbells, the guys that could sing and write and play and were such good musicians, [like] Jerry Reed. Because just when you think maybe that’s lost, maybe nobody spends the time to get that good anymore, then somebody like Zach Top or Billy Strings comes along, who in my opinion is just as good of a picker as anybody’s ever been, and you’re like, ‘Okay, it’s still out there.’”