Damn the Luck, the new CD release by Lucky Tubb & The Modern Day Troubadours evokes images of smoke-filled honky tonks, fallen angels, gun–toting rounders, hard drinkin’ backsliders and hopelessly scarred romantics. This CD is as honest and real as a hot plate of biscuits and gravy. The melodies, the production and the instrumentation on these eleven songs could have easily fit in on an old Wurlitzer juke box, in any Texas beer joint, honky tank, or roadhouse, during the early to mid 50’s, when Ernest (Tubb) had us waltzing across Texas (another Tubb, Talmedge , actually wrote “waltz across Texas”)
Lucky Tubb has taken it upon himself to preserve his family’s musical heritage and does so with reverence and pride. The songs here shine like sequins on a vintage Nudie suit (early Porter and pre-Gram), with Lucky staking vocal claim to the sound created by his elders. This is really a Tubb “family” album. Lucky’s Uncle Douglas wrote three of the eleven songs on the album (written between 1952 and 1956), and another relative (Ronnie Wade) gets the star treatment with a song from 1957, Lucky himself penned six songs on the CD and they sound as genuine and heartfelt as those written over 50 years ago.