First Listen: Vaya Con Dios By A Little Farther West

Sometimes it’s the cover art that grabs you and makes you listen. That was the case with A Little Farther West’s new release, Vaya Con Dios, out June 10. Once you play it, it’s the music that keeps you coming back.

We’re happy to give you a look at that cover art, but, more important, we’re really pleased to give you a first listen to one of the tracks: a cover of Marty Stuart’s “Please Don’t Say Goodbye.”

A Little Farther West are an Oklahoma-based husband-and-wife duo — Robert Maxwell Case on guitar and Susie Case on Continental combo organ. They find their inspiration, as the album cover would suggest, in classic retro artists as well as western films and lore.

With Vaya Con Dios, their latest album (Town and Country Records/ Virtual Label), the couple offer up what could be the guitar-soaked soundtrack of a hip spaghetti western where the hero really knows how to sit a horse or the not-background music at a cool cocktail party where boots and bolo ties are as de rigueur as dancing. That’s no coincidence: The new album’s songs range from “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and the “Theme From the Magnificent Seven” to Bob Wills’ “Faded Love” and “When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings.”

With the Gene Autry standard “When It’s Springtime in the Rockies” or the Herb Alpert classic “El Toro Solitario” piping into your ears, you’ll be wishing you were in the saddle heading for Colorado or Mexico.

And while you’re in that starring-in-your-own-western frame of mind — their take on Marty Stuart’s “Please Don’t Say Goodbye” is so cinematic, you can practically see with teary eyes your erstwhile love riding off into a sad, sad sunset.

But the vibe isn’t melodramatic or morose by any means.

“Like a lot of us who grew up watching classic westerns in the movies and on television, I associate this style of music with feelings of joy and escape,” Robert says.

Credit their vibe and their guitar-forward approach (fittingly heavy on tremolo and reverb) for the band’s popularity at Old West celebrations like Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show at the Pawnee Bill Ranch in Pawnee,  Oklahoma, and Will’s Country Christmas at the Will Rogers Birthplace Ranch in Oolagah, Oklahoma.

With Vaya Con Dios, the duo continue the musical tradition established by their four previous albums: A Little Farther West, Mountain Storm, God Must Be a Cowboy, and Christmas on the Line.

We talked with Robert and Susie about making the new record and living in Oklahoma.

Cowboys & Indians: A husband-and-wife and musical duo — how does that work?
A Little Farther West: It feels like any other mom-and-pop business, with perhaps a little more time-shifting. Susie is pretty outgoing, so the fans gravitate to her. Robert is a little more reserved, the music nerd.  It’s been working well so far with concentration on each of our strengths.

C&I: Talk a little about your instrumentation. How did you each come to music and your instruments? How do you go about getting an arrangement you like?
A Little Farther West: The guitar tones are all clean, ’50s – ’60s-influenced ... Duane Eddy-ish, except Robert uses PAF-style humbucker pickups for a more rounded sound. His current guitar of choice is a 2008 Ibanez AFS-85T (based on the 1957 Gibson ES-350T played by Chuck Berry). Susie’s instrument is a 2018 Korg Vox Continental 61 that specializes in reproducing the classic organ sounds of the Sixties (think “I’m a Believer” and “Light My Fire”). It’s a combination of two ’60s instruments ironically seldom heard together. The arrangements evolve from boiling down a song to its basics so it can be performed by a small combo.

C&I: You’re inspired by classic retro artists as well as westerns and lore. …
A Little Farther West: We both like the music to be big, but light and fun and joyful. Robert calls the style “primitive” because it’s based on super-strong melodies evoking wide-open spaces (especially those from the movie composers Dimitri Tiomkin, Elmer Bernstein, Ennio Morricone, Dominic Frontiere, etc.). Gene Autry’s “South of the Border,” Tex Ritter’s “High Noon,” and Booker T’s “Hang ’Em High” all come to mind. If John Wayne’s in it, Susie’s there.

C&I: What’s the story behind the name of the band?
A Little Farther West: We lived eight years in Canyon Lake, Texas, during which time we became huge fans of KNBT-FM and program director Mattson Rainer in New Braunfels. He played the song “A Little Farther West” by singer-songwriter Walt Wilkins, and we both fell in love with the imagery. When it came time to record our first album, there seemed to be no better choice for a name.

C&I: C&I: We’re talking on the occasion of the premiere of one of the tracks on Vaya Con Dios in advance of the album release on June 10. Why did you choose to cover Marty Stuart’s “Please Don’t Say Goodbye”?
A Little Farther West: Is there anyone who is not a fan of the Superlatives? On a whim, Robert sent our first two albums to Marty’s engineer, Mick Conley, who let us know that he loved what we were doing. We had recorded Marty’s “Rhapsidio Sangre De Cristo” instrumental, and our version predated their audio release of the song. “Please Don’t Say Goodbye” is a standout from their “Western” album, Way Out West, and Marty personally gave us his blessing to record it.

C&I: What is your favorite part of “Please Don’t Say Goodbye”?
A Little Farther West: At its core, this is a solid piece of songwriting by Marty Stuart and Harry Stinson, with the Superlatives’ version being more orchestral. When Robert arranged it for a small combo, he couldn’t help but add a figure at the end of each bridge ... something totally derived from arranger John Barry’s James Bond canon. He’s proud of that.

C&I: How did your lyric video for the song come together?
A Little Farther West: Our manager, Brad, encountered Lisa Bastoni, a rising Americana artist herself, at an industry event. She had produced some innovative videos for herself and a few for other artists. Brad suggested we contact Lisa, and the rest, as they say, is history. Lisa understood the denial-of-a-breakup theme of the song and positioned it within lots of sunset desert/cowboy imagery — sure to amaze and dazzle.

C&I: Super-cool track list for Vaya Con Dios. What about the title track makes it the centerpiece of the record?
A Little Farther West: Thanks. Robert likes songs that touch on “cowboy logic” — the decisions, right or wrong, made alone with little guidance. “Vaya Con Dios” — the Spanish literally translates “Go With God” — is about lovers who have to part, but who will always be together in spirit.

C&I: Neat cover art — tell us about it.
A Little Farther West: Back in the late 1920s, before talkies and color film, the movie artwork had to depict the feelings to be conveyed. Our cover is a poster from the 1929 motion picture Gun Law, starring Tom Tyler, which had become public domain over the years.

C&I: What keeps you in Oklahoma?
A Little Farther West: Happily, we’re near Susie’s family on a “micro-ranch” in “Green Country,” between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, with a National Parks-style “parkitecture” cabin. We love it and also are pretty centrally located for touring the Lower 48 as the pandemic wanes.

C&I: What should we be sure to experience in Oklahoma/your hometown?
A Little Farther West: The first place we always take visitors is to Cain’s Ballroom. Robert says it’s his favorite place in the world. Then there’s the Woody Guthrie Museum/Guthrie Green and the Philbrook Museum/Philbrook Museum of Art, plus the Woolaroc Museum & Wildlife Preserve in Bartlesville and the Pioneer Woman Mercantile in Pawhuska. We love the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City and the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in Muskogee. And, coming soon in Tulsa, the Bob Dylan Center, the Oklahoma Museum of Popular Culture (OKPOP), and the reconstructed Gilcrease Museum/Art of the American West.

C&I: What’s next for you?
A Little Farther West: Like every music act, we are itching to be on the road again. We can’t wait to again be bringing our music to the world.

Vaya Con Dios Track List

1. Theme From the Magnificent Seven (Inst.)From John Sturges’ classic 1960 western starring Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen.
2. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.The legendary songwriting team of Hal David and Burt Bacharach wrote this song for the John Ford-directed 1962 film featuring James Stewart and John Wayne.
3. I Don’t Want to Know. San Antonio, Texas, band The Last Bandoleros wrote and recorded this Tex-Mex song, inspired by spaghetti westerns, in 2016.
4. Faded Love. This 1950 country music hit by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys was a version of the 1856 ballad “Darling Nellie Gray.”
5. Ready for the Times to Get Better. Garth Brooks’ producer, Allen Reynolds, wrote this song and produced Crystal Gayle’s hit version in 1978.
6. Vaya Con Dios.Les Paul and Mary Ford’s recording topped the pop charts for 11 nonconsecutive weeks in 1953.
7. When It’s Springtime in the Rockies. Initially published in 1929 and used in several films in the late 1930s and early 1940s, this song is most associated with cowboy singer Gene Autry and his 1937 motion picture Springtime in the Rockies.
8. El Toro Solitario (Inst.) Best-known as “The Lonely Bull,” the 1962 hit by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass on A&M Records, the song was written by Alpert associate Sol Lake. Irving “Bud” Coleman’s guitar work on the original inspired cover versions by the Ventures and the Shadows.
9. Livin’ the Life. A remake of one of Robert’s early original songs, the lyrics describe some very “cowboylike” thought processes.
10. Wand’rin’ Star.From the 1951 Broadway musical “Paint Your Wagon,” this song was written by Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Loewe.
11. Tucson Train. Written and sung by Bruce Springsteen and featured in both his Top 10 2019 album Western Starsand the associated concert motion picture of the same name, this song is a modern-day Western odyssey.
12. Please Don’t Say Goodbye.In 2017 Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives released their ode to the West, the album Way Out West, produced by Mike Campbell. It included this song, written by Marty and drummer Harry Stinson, that brings the Old West into the modern era.
13. When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings. This song, featured in the Coen Brothers’ 2018 western anthology film “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” was written by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. It received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song at the 2019 Academy Awards.

Pre-order/pre-save the album.

For more on A Little Farther West, visit their website and connect on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Soundcloud. 

Photography: (All images) courtesy A Little Farther West