With his debut album, Dale Watson submitted his credentials as a retro country stylist of the highest caliber. Yet his sophomore LP—1996’s Blessed or Damned—emphasizes the substance under the style. Sure, he has a shiny pompadour and a vocal style that borrows from Johnny Paycheck and Waylon Jennings, but Watson remains focused on emotional connections. In other words, he’s about more than a vintage country kick. As alienated as Watson feels from Nashville's current state of affairs, there's little keeping a song like “Blessed or Damned” from being a hit ballad. While it'd probably be fairly easy for Watson to sell a few of his intelligent, tenderhearted ballads to a superstar like George Strait, he prefers to work with forgotten heroes like Johnny Bush, whose mellow croon elevates “That’s What I Like About Texas.” There’s no one who enjoys singing about truck stops and honky-tonks more than Watson, and few do it better, but a song as direct as “Shortcut to the Streets of Gold” should confirm that he's much more than a vintage revue.