Radney Foster

250,000 watts of border-radio power blasted the city of Del Rio from right across the Rio Grande, and it seems like every last one of 'em wound up in Texas native Radney Foster one way or another. On his solo debut album (which name-checks his hometown, incidentally), Foster two-steps his way to a Lone Star heartache in "Just Call Me Lonesome." The sound of a sledgehammer hitting a spike has never — well, not since Sam Cooke's "Chain Gang — been as effective as it is in Foster's relationship-as-architecture anthem, "Hammer and Nails." And after penning a Top 10 smash single for the Sweethearts of the Rodeo, he and cowriter Bill Lloyd teamed up for a boot-scootin' wedge of rockabilly goodness, "Crazy Over You," their breakout hit as a recording duo.

In Next Steps, Radney revisits his biggest hit, pays homage to one of country's greatest outlaws, and more.

Though Foster and Lloyd made only three albums, they pushed the envelope of what was then called "new country," partly by turning back to the basics: Everlys-style harmonies, lyrics worth singing, and a thumpin' good beat — all of which can be found on "Is It Love" from Faster & Llouder. When Foster recorded the live Are You Ready for the Big Show? for indie label Dualtone, he didn't just recut his earlier hit "Nobody Wins"; he reinvented it, scaling back the bigness of his original track, but dumping in a ten-gallon hatful of bass throbbing like a troubled lover's heart. And Radney lays a coat of gloss on "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)," Waylon Jennings' rough-hewn homage to outlaw poets and country-style lovin' and feudin'.

In Deep Cuts, Foster revs up, chills out, and thinks — and sings — about the past.

Usually when Radney gets rockin', he's tuned in to an inner radio station whose dial is stuck somewhere around 1960 and where the Johnny Burnette Trio is still on the playlist. But in "I've Got a Picture," Foster's having a '70s-style Fleetwood Mac attack…with a little Texas hot sauce on the side. Radney defies the odds and rolls his lovelorn dice one more time in "Fools That Dream" from This World We Live In, gracefully pondering his chances with little more than a pedal steel for company. And if you ever want to hear the high-lonesome whine of the wind through the saguaros, cue up "Went for a Ride," a sun-baked scrapbook of cowpunchers and the barbed wire that choked off their home on the range.

Considering that he grew up — literally — in the shadow of Wolfman Jack's home, the 250,000-watt border radio mega-station XERF, it's no surprise that Radney Foster's Texas twang rocks like a mustang on locoweed. Hired as a staff writer for Mary Tyler Moore's publishing company, he joined forces with Bill Lloyd, a kindred spirit who saw their songwriting as a ticket to the big time as performers. Thanks to a hit ("Since I Found You") penned for Sweethearts of the Rodeo, the duo got a shot at their own contract, and the hits came quickly: three Top 10s on their first album. But a pair of albums later, they went their separate ways, with Radney concentrating on a hotrod honky-tonk groove that sprang full-blown on his solo debut, Del Rio, TX 1959, and hasn't let up — for a decade and a half — since.