Jason Boland and The Stragglers

It's admirable when a musician gets back to his roots, there's no questioning that. But in a lot of ways, it's even more admirable when an artist has no need to do that – having never lost touch with those roots in the first place. Jason Boland falls squarely into the latter category, having spent the better part of the last 15 years entrenching himself in the so-called "red dirt" of his native state of Oklahoma and adopted home in Texas and while spreading his musical branches to cover a remarkable amount of territory.

"I've always thought it was important to keep one foot in tradition and the other pointed in the direction you want to go," says Boland. "I didn't invent the G chord, so I'm standing on the shoulders of the giants that did, and on the shoulders of some great songwriters that have come before me. I'm using an old stencil, but adding my own colors."

On their new studio album, Dark And Dirty Mile, Boland and his compatriots use a wide array of hues to illustrate 11 songs of rejection and redemption, dark clouds and silver linings, all assembled in the rough-hewn manner that's earned him an ever-growing fan base – a following that's snapped up more than a half-million records over the past decade and change.

Dark And Dirty Mile is a song cycle of sorts, one that finds Boland seeking – and finding -- beauty in life's often-overlooked places, learning tough lessons through experience and overcoming obstacles with the help of others. That's evident in the title track, which opens the album with a vividly drawn emotional landscape strewn with moments of regret and missed opportunities – but a clear bead on a clear horizon.

A similar dichotomy rolls through "Electric Bill," a slow burn of a honky-tonk tune that conjures a picture of a man with an overdrawn checkbook in one hand and the hand of a loved one in the other – a sentiment he credits to his wife, who he says, reminded him that, "if everything is taken away tomorrow, there's still love and hope in the world."

Boland presents that sentiment without a drop of Hallmark saccharine, however. He doesn't sweeten these tunes with easy studio tricks or the sort of pop trickery so often heard on Music City productions these days. The surface is anything but slick, and the sinew that runs through songs like the organ-tinged strut "Green Screen" and the high lonesome desert tone of his take on Randy Crouch's "They Took It Away" lends a tone that's ragged-but-right, ideal for Boland's always-incisive lyrics.