Leisure Rodeo Scott Ballew

• 1Tiny Gods02:46
• 2Paris, TX03:31
• 3Border Kid03:23
• 4High Times03:19
• 5K Hole Deluxe03:20
• 6Convenience Store World06:08
• 7Postcard from Paradise02:57
• 8Sweetest Friend02:50
• 9Blue Eyes03:48
• 10Leisure Rodeo03:16
• Total Runtime35:18

Info for Leisure Rodeo

"Leisure Rodeo" is the new album from Scott Ballew, following up 2021’s surprise debut Talking to Mountains. Born in Austin in the early 80’s Ballew eventually drifted out west to California, where he made a name for himself as a film director. At the age of 30 he ended up back in Austin, got sober, picked up the guitar and started writing songs. Most of those songs ended up on Ballew’s debut, but he kept writing and refining his craft, eventually ending up with ten tracks for a follow up album. Picking up where he left off, Leisure Rodeo features world-weary vignettes in the vein of Townes Van Zandt and Jerry Jeff Walker set to rustic country-folk arrangements. Frequent collaborators Jesse Woods, Shane Renfro (RF Shannon), Jesse Siebenberg, and Todd Hannigan are back, joined by special guest appearances from Ryan Bingham on “Border Kid” and Erika Wennerstrom (The Heartless Bastards) on “Convenience Store World”. Highly anticipated new album from Scott Ballew, featuring contributions from Ryan Bingham, Erika Wennerstrom (The Heartless Bastards), Jesse Woods, and Shane Renfro (RF Shannon).

Scott Ballew was born in Austin, TX. Year 1983. He didn’t exist when the cosmic cowboy craze glittered its way through town and was an infant when Daniel Johnston was selling cassettes outside of Tower Records on Guadalupe. At the age of 30, after a blurry decade of making films and commercials in Southern California, Scott returned home to Austin. Inspired by the straightforward and slightly manic music of Michael Hurley and Townes Van Zandt, he first found a creative outlet in the form of films. Of the many projects, perhaps the most pivotal was directing the only documentary about the work of the great artist Terry Allen.

I don’t know when Scott started writing songs, but I imagine it was somewhere between Texas and Montana. He somehow plowed through the pre-highway dirt job of Willis Alan Ramsey and landed right in the middle of a Livingston Saturday Night. Scott’s commitment to narrative song and exploring the soul of a slightly older America is hitting all targets front and rear view, all the while reminding us that depression and self destruction can also be funny.

Now 37, he has peeled back another layer to reveal a poetic loner just as lost as the rest of us in this bright and burning futureworld. These songs were recorded in an old house in Lockhart, TX in the summer. It sounds like it. Unplug and drift down to 1972. It’s a long drive and something is always close behind.

“Scott's songs are stories that go rolling through your head like little movies. You watch them inside yourself as much as you hear them. And you carry away something of value you didn’t have before. As far as I'm concerned that’s exactly what a good song should do. That and tell the truth. Scott's songs do all of this.” - Terry Allen

“Every now and then Scotty would sneak a pretty good song in around the campfire. I never knew how serious he was about it until he sent me his most recent collection of tunes. It takes a lot of courage to open up and share your soul in a song and I’m damn sure that when folks hear his tunes they’ll be happy he did.” - Ryan Bingham

“Stories don’t work if they’re insincere, Scott can tell stories. His whole life is a story” - Jesse Woods

Scott Ballew

Scott Ballew
was born in Austin, TX in 1983. He didn’t exist when the cosmic cowboy craze glittered its way through town. And he was an infant when Daniel Johnston started selling cassettes outside of Tower Records on Guadalupe. At the age of 30, after a blurry decade of making films and commercials in Southern California, Scott returned home to Austin.

Inspired by the music of Michael Hurley and Townes Van Zandt, he first found a creative outlet in the form of films. Of the many projects, perhaps the most pivotal was directing the only documentary about the work of the great artist and musician Terry Allen, titled “Everything For All Reasons”.

Eventually Scott picked up the guitar when he got sober a few years ago. He taught himself a few chords, learned “Plastic Jesus” and some John Prine songs, and left the guitar in a corner for his friends to play. Then all of the sudden his dad got real sick and he found himself in the middle of a bad breakup, stuck at home with a piano and guitar while the world started falling apart in the spring of 2020.

Against his better judgement he started writing songs, and he wrote a lot of them. Pretty soon he was headed into an old house in Lockhart, TX to record some tunes with his friends. The resulting collection of songs became his debut album Talking to Mountains. Produced by longtime compadre Jesse Woods, the album features a host of friends from the Austin music scene including Todd Hannigan, Odessa Jorgenson, Austin Leonard Jones, and more.

This album contains no booklet.