Stoney LaRue - The Red Dirt Album (2005)

Oklahoma singer-songwriter Stoney LaRue should be no stranger to roots music fans who follow the ascending "Red Dirt" music scene based in Oklahoma. His debut release, "The Red Dirt Album," spelled out his allegiance once and for all to the Plains-centric genre launched by Bob Childers.

But while LaRue has spent most of his life north of the Red River, he enjoys one tie to the Coastal Bend: He was born in Taft. "I was 5 years old when we moved to Southeast Oklahoma,"LaRue started turning heads as leader of the Organic Boogie Band, an Oklahoma circuit ensemble based in Tulsa. The band, which formed in 2001, released "Downtown," a debut album recorded in Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa and mixed in a trailer on the side of a cliff in Bartlesville.

LaRue struck out on his own soon after and released "The Red Dirt Album" independently in August 2005. The disc contained songs that LaRue co-wrote with famed songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard and "Red Dirt" regular Cody Canada as well as covers of songs by Bob Dylan and Oklahoma's Red Dirt Rangers. One year later, LaRue recorded a live album for the "Live at Billy Bob's" CD series, which is named after the famous honky tonk in the Fort Worth stockyards.

Backed by drummer Jeremy Bryant, bassist Jesse Fritz, guitarist Kevin Webb, fiddle player Jeremy Watkins and keyboardist Steve Littleton, LaRue fills his schedules with scores of performances at clubs and festivals that have taken him as far as the Caribbean and Europe. The band has opened for a range of headliners including Lee Ann Womack, Cross Canadian Ragweed and Willie Nelson.

Track List:

01 Down in Flames
02 Closer To You
03 Idabel Blues
04 Downtown
05 Solid Gone
06 Walk Away
07 Texas Moon
08 One Chord Song
09 Bluebird Wine
10 Let Me Hold You
11 Forever Young

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