THE PANHANDLERS All Ages Support acts subject to change. Serving local favorites from The Artichoke Sandwich Bar! Wear your Cotillion merch and jump to the front of the GA line. All sales are final. No exchanges or refunds unless a show is cancelled or postponed. The Panhandlers are four native sons from the outskirts of Texas society, having spent much of their lives in the high desert and southern prairie. Individually, Josh Abbott, John Baumann, William Clark Green, and Flatland Cavalry’s Cleto Cordero have long pursued that Far West Texas mythos and Panhandle lore. Scattered throughout their solo catalogs, the four frontmen have delivered earnest anthems and endearing balladry that embodies a Flatland life and South Plains dreams. Still, that hasn’t ever been quite enough for Abbott, Baumann, Cordero, and Green, who in early 2020 released The Panhandlers. Built around a collection of organic and visceral rural reflections, hardscrabbled character sketches, and a wide open spaces state of mind, The Panhandlers thrived under the guidance of songwriting scholar and album producer Bruce Robison. With a Who’s Who of musicians in tow and recorded on analog two-inch tape at Robison’s The Bunker Studio, the pairings fit hand-in-glove for the set of windswept vignettes and honky-tonk mosaics. Now, some three years later, they pick right up where The Panhandlers left off. Tough Country finds the four songwriters diving further into rough West Texas caliche and rich Panhandle soil, unearthing campfire compositions, forlorn ballads, romantic rendezvous, and charming singalongs. Like their previous efforts, Tough Country finds the four working with Robison together once again at The Bunker for a desert-swept sonic punch that offers hints of Western Swing, Flatland folk, and rollicking country ambiance. Much like the plainspoken poets, dancehall desperados, iconoclast artists, and the cowboy wordsmiths they call heroes, The Panhandlers walk the fine line between romanticizing the rugged land and its hearty inhabitants with gentle acknowledgments and sincere homages, all the while blazing their own trails and reveling in the satisfaction of unveiling their own fresh spin on old traditions.