Hayes Carll paused a moment for a confession.
"I don't have a lot of love songs," he told the Bowery Ballroom crowd. "I have a lot of sex songs."
He also has a lot of songs about drinking, playing in bars and love gone wrong. Do you really need any more reasons to run out and buy his fine "Trouble in Mind" album?
Well, Carll delivered many more, with his winding Dylanesque rockers like "A Lover Like You" and his engaging stories about playing in Crystal Beach, Texas, roadhouses where he was part of the daily specials ("All the fried chicken you can eat and Hayes Carll - $4.99").
All that experience has made him quick on his feet, too. When he started his gorgeous ballad "Willing to Love Again" with the line "I drink too much" and received an inappropriate "Woooo!" as a response for the somber confession, he smiled and started over, saying, "You're fun."
Well, he would know.
SETLIST: Faulkner Street / Beaumont / I Don't Wanna Grow Up / A Lover Like You / Drunken Poet's Dream / Willing To Love Again / I Got a Gig / Wish I Hadn't Stayed So Long / Down the Road Tonight / Bad Liver and a Broken Heart
PHOTO: Hayes Carll by Keith Carter for Lost Highway