KEVIN DEAL
Time was – and not so long ago–that country was strictly working man’s music. Working women, too, of course–and we’re talking hard work here. Knuckle-busting, foot flattening, slow-to-get-up, work that has ya leaving (and returning) home in the dark in a dinged-up pickup truck that’s actually used to haul things. And then, figuring out which overdue bill gets paid next. Yep, time was it was working man’s music – in Kevin Deal’s case, it still is.
Kevin Deal, the Dallas/Ft. Worth-area stonemason contractor who’s increasingly finding his name mentioned in the heady company of rock-solid movers-and-shakers in blue-collar country AND the vaunted Lone Star troubadour tradition, has unleashed his fifth killer disc, RAW DEAL.
RAW DEAL combines two new originals with twenty live cuts to expand and illuminate Deal’s unwavering commitment to music. Music that sounds and feels like real, bone-jarring LIFE.
Billboard Magazine wrote that Kevin “is in the Steve Earle/Joe Ely mold, both in terms of style and gambler’s instinct,” No Depression spoke of “country and blues and Tex-Mex and a whole lot of Lone Star soul, sung and played with enough passion to rope your heart and slap a silly grin on your face...Deal has an impressive ability (akin to Charlie Robison, Guy Clark and Ray Wylie Hubbard) to blend humor, heartbreak and quirky character studies in his songwriting,” and The Washington Post chimed in with “Deal’s music is real, from the heart, intensely personal and supported by melodies and instrumentation that recall Merle Haggard and others of his kind from the 1960s.”