We are heading back to the USA, where Los Angeles roadhouse singer David Serby takes us into the smoky corners of Old Calexico on “Border Town Romance”, premiering today on the AU review.
For those new to Serby, the Los Angeles-based country artist has spent more than two decades carving out his own brand of hardwood-floor honky tonk and Bakersfield-inspired roots music. Born in North Hollywood and raised outside Chicago, Serby came to music after a stint in the film world, bringing a screenwriter’s eye for character, place and dialogue to his songwriting. Across a run of records dating back to 2006, he has shared stages with the likes of Lucinda Williams, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson, Neko Case and Old 97’s, while continuing to build a body of work full of flawed characters, bar-room poetry and beautifully bruised country storytelling.
Taken from his forthcoming album Broken Heart in a Honky Tonk, out May 29, “Border Town Romance” tells the story of a mysterious woman who has run as far as she can go, stepping off a bus into a border town where “car exhaust and perfume fills the air.” Selling curios to half-drunk tourists and renting a run-down room by the week, she becomes the subject of local fascination — but she is not looking to be saved, swept away, or turned into somebody else’s love story.
With accordion from Carl Byron giving the track its cantina glow, and Edward Tree’s guitar work adding colour around Serby’s lived-in vocal, the song carries a cinematic sense of place. You can almost see the candlelight, the ranch hand working up the courage to ask for a dance, and the woman at the centre of it all quietly keeping her own counsel.
The chorus lands with the bittersweet clarity of classic country storytelling: she may be surrounded by longing, but “she ain’t lookin’ for a border town romance.” Instead, Serby gives us one of the album’s most intriguing characters — someone not lonely, not star-crossed, but simply “looking to stay lost.”
It is country music with a novelist’s eye: dusty, detailed, wry and compassionate, finding drama not in grand gestures but in the small moments between strangers under cantina light.
Listen to “Border Town Romance” below.
Broken Heart in a Honky Tonk is released May 29.
You can keep up to date with David Serby via his website, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube
Header image credit: Jeff Wiant
