Larry Borden’s single, “Four Feet of Rain”, released with Musik Radio Promotions in support of Hurricane Harvey victims.

If the term country music still conjures images of rhinestones and fringed shirts, line dancing and pick-up trucks then that is exactly why we need artists like Larry Borden.

This is the sound of a less show-business country scene, a guitar picked with dirt-stained hands, songs forged from the experience of hard work, scratching a living from the dark earth, of being at one with land and battling the elements. In fact, it sounds like nothing less than America’s beating, blue-collar heart.

And to be fair it is probably an America that exists as much in its road movies, TV adverts, beat legacy, literature and other rose-tinted nostalgia as reality, but it is, to a degree, also the hard truth that underlies the American Dream, the soundtrack to a country built from the ground up. There is just something in his musical soul which makes it quintessentially of that place but when and where is something that is harder to put your finger on.

Larry Borden has worked hard both in regular life and music too, has traveled coast to coast for the last twenty years and shared stages with the likes of Jerry Reed, John Conlee, Martin Del Ray and Williams and Ree. Lately, after the devastation of his South Texan home by Hurricane Harvey, he has gathered up his musical posse, The Four Feet of Rain Band, and set about raising money for those who tragically lost their homes.

Musically songs like the titular Four Feet of Rain mixes lilting country rhythms, folky deliveries, a ragged bluesy soul, a steady groove and even after fitting all of those traits together manages to retain an immediacy and infectiousness that is normally only found in classic pop writing. It draws a line between 60’s coffee shops and modern country-pop crossovers, timeless porch jam sessions and 70’s Austin cosmic cowboy gigs, European folk and New World acoustic blues. In fact, there isn’t much in the discerning musical world that it doesn’t touch upon and if there are genres that it doesn’t concern itself with, then you probably shouldn’t worry about.

All proceeds from the song, “Four Feet Of Rain”, will go to repairing homes affected by Hurricane Harvey. For more info on that click on Project Harvey.