Ages 21+ Doors: 7:30 Music: 8:30 Sunday April 27th Rob Leines "I'm
burning down the interstate," Rob Leines sings halfway through
Headcase, an album that finds the road warrior occupying the
intersection of blue-collar rock & roll and outlaw country. Pulling
triple duty as a songwriter, southern storyteller, and modern-day
guitar hero, Leines fills his third album with tales from the fast
lane, punctuating each song with amplified riffs and a voice sharpened
by a heavy touring schedule. The result is a record for dive bars and
dance halls, for highways and honky-tonks, for wheels that spin and
and horizons that linger just out of reach. Headcase shines its light
on more than surface-level road songs, though. Leines digs deep
beneath the blacktop, delivering music about love lost, chances taken,
and life lived between the mile markers. Songs like "Double Wide"
still raise plenty of hell, but there's vulnerability here, too — a
sense that you can't outrun your problems, even at 80 miles per hour.
"Headcase is about doing whatever it takes to navigate the roads in
your life," Leines explains. "It's about the things we do to just keep
on trucking." Before recording Headcase with co-producers Mike
Harmeier (the longtime frontman of Silverada, formerly known as Mike
and the Moonpies) and Adam Odor, Leines quit his longtime job as a
welder and hit the road in support of his 2021 album, Blood Sweat and
Beers. The record became his breakthrough release, earning Leines a
year's worth of gigs with marquee acts like Dwight Yoakam and The
Mavericks. Night after night, he hit the stage with his power trio,
mixing rock & roll bang with Telecaster twang. "After putting in all
those hours and all those miles, we became really confident with our
ability to put on a rock show," he remembers. "That's what this music
is: it's rock & roll with a cowboy hat." To capture the
rough-and-rowdy spirit of those concerts, Leines and his two bandmates
— along with guests like organ player David Percefull (owner of
Yellow Dog Studios) and harmony singer Kelley Mickwee (a fellow
Texas-based solo artist, as well as a member of Shinyribs) — headed
to Wimberley, TX, where they recorded Headcase during short breaks
between shows. "We toured for three months before we started tracking,
and we went straight from a gig into the studio," he remembers. "It
meant our chops were sharp, and everything felt familiar." For fans of
Blood Sweat and Beers, Leines' guitar playing — a mix of hybrid
finger-picking, blues-driven rock riffs, slide guitar, and distorted
chords from a customized Gregg Tele — will feel familiar, too. Every
song is rooted in that instrument, with Leines firing twin barrels of
fierce fretwork and heartland hooks. At the same time, Headcase
explores new territory. The breezy, bouncing "High in the Cotton"
draws parallels between turbine welding and music-playing, two
on-the-go jobs that require workers to spend countless days away from
friends and family. Having dedicated years to both careers, Leines
delivers the song's spoken-word verses in a deep, weary baritone that
channels the exhaustion of a long workweek. Elsewhere, he pays tribute
to his grandparents with "Goldmine," whose funky, fiery riff nods to
Jerry Reed. And on the hard-hitting "Black Lingerie," he replaces the
hard-charging speed of his earlier songs for a slowed-down swagger
that sounds dark, driven, and dangerous. Together, those songs turn
Headcase into an album that blends roadhouse grit with juke joint
grease. It's the soundtrack for the sort of road trip that never
really ends, and Leines has never sounded so dedicated to the long
haul.
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10/07/2025 Last update