Six Market Blvd-Running on Seven

Six Market Blvd is a young band out of Stephenville that I first became aware of a couple years back. When I first heard them, they were very young and green and were still trying to figure out where they fit in and what exactly their sound was. Well, the past couple years of wood-shedding has done them very well and the result is the new album: Running on Seven. A self-produced affair with a little help from Bart Rose finds the lads from 6MB broadening their sound and style into a well-rounded album that finds them melding stone cold country sounds and rock-tinged soul stylings into something new and relevant.

This is what country music should sound like in 2010. These guys aren’t rehashing 80’s pop like many Nashville albums do these days, and they aren’t banging out recycled Ragweed and Randy Rogers Band riffs like so many Texas acts do. They have chased and captured their own muse…and she’s a whimsical country delight.

Lead vocalist Clayton Landua has a soulful voice reminiscent of singers like Adam Hood and Sean McConnell. His voice is accompanied by fantastic multi-part harmonies from lead guitarist Josh Serrato and bass player Ben Hussey. The way their voices blend are a throwback to the one-mic radio barnshow country radio programs of the 40’s…if those guys back then had access to electric guitars and rolling organ fills. This dynamic is most evident on the track “Silence In Me”, but is found throughout the album.

“High In Heaven” sounds like the Black Crowes when they want to go unplugged. Again, perfectly blended harmonies are mixed with rolling banjo, precisely placed fiddle and a tasty melody. “Terrible Lies” kicks off with a smoky Lindsey Buckingham type guitar riff straight from Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours sessions, yet it is paired with some of the most typically country vocals on the album to create a cool genre-bending style.

6MB doesn’t just sit back and deliver laid back romantic musings, they also know how to groove. This is best displayed on album opener, “A Feelin’” and the Ragweed-esque “Ready to Throw” that finds the band mining Ragweed’s waters without blatantly copying them. “Stuck in the Pen” begins with some Pink Floyd style haunting before transitioning into some Skynyrd style groovin’ and then proceeds to bounce back and forth the rest of the song.

Yet, despite the rockin’ joints…it’s when 6MB finds themselves in a reflective mood that they shine the brightest. Songs like “Misery In Me”, which evokes Gary Stewart’s best work, album closer “Wintertime” that renders itself like a Stoney LaRue acoustic bootleg circa 2003 and “Roses” which is the type of song that has girls dragging reluctant cowboys to scratch boots across sawdust signal that this is a young band with emotional depth beyond their years; and a band to be reckoned with in the years to come.

Running on Seven may be titled due to the band’s van running one cylinder short, but this band and album hit on all cylinders from track 1-13 and it is one of the year’s best.

You can order it from our good friends at Texas Red Dirt Roads