Dustin Welch - Amateur Theater (2019)

2019 release from the Texas troubadour. Every now and then, a songwriter is gifted by their subconscious - or perhaps even a higher, more mysterious power - with a song in a dream. It might be just a fragment: a key line or chorus, a snatch of melody that lingers through the fog of waking up, or perhaps even a world-shaking riff on the order of "Satisfaction." Dustin Welch can attest to the phenomenon himself, having been blessed with not just a couple of legitimate "dream songs" over the years, but something on a far grander scale. Once upon a time, he dreamed a whole sound. Welch would spend the better part of his teens and early 20s chasing that sound/vision before finally cornering it on his 2009 debut, Whisky Priest - but he knew from the very start of that project that one album alone would not be enough to corral it's full sonic and thematic scope. It demanded, at the very least, a trilogy. And time: time for each of the songs to reveal themselves in full, unforced, and find their own alignment in the cycle, and time for the songwriter himself to continue to grow along the way. Thus it would be four years before Welch delivered the second chapter (2013's Tijuana Bible), and another six years after that before bringing the trilogy to it's proper close. Not, as he'd originally predicted, before the altar of some church (be it sacred or profane), but rather full circle to a stage where art - and dreams - often as not don't end, but begin.