Kevin Higgins's Page

Sometimes a special album and gifted artist come along to captivate the hearts and imagination of music lovers. Find Your Shine by Kevin Higgins is one of those cases. As veteran music journalist Rob Patterson observes in the disc’s liner notes, “On this CD, Kevin Higgins ascends to the pantheon of eloquent and evocative American singer-songwriters with that rare gift for articulating the fullness of human experience within splendid and alluring melodies.”

Yes, Find Your Shine is a kind of magical album, one that offers a musical, personal and metaphorical journey that also tours through Higgins’ own life and the realm of the imagination to transport the listener to those special places where music and lyrics touch the heart, mind and soul, ushering Higgins into same league as lauded and gifted Texas singer-songwriters like Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle (all of whom Higgins has been likened to by critics and listeners while also forging his own creative signature).

In a live setting, Kevin Higgins is an anomaly. No scripted, polished shtick, and not the withdrawn uber-artist who regards the audience as his minions. His demeanor morphs with ease from engaging performer to “man on the street.” Between songs he can be self-deprecating, philosophical, hilariously witty, and downright sarcastic. Sometimes he can be dead-on with social commentaries and other times he just sits there, eyes transfixed, seeing something we don't, as if there is a ghost leaning against the back wall.

Raised in El Paso, Higgins bought his first guitar with money earned from running carnival rides and grooming horses. He slogged through years in cover bands, lived on the streets and worked in luxury hotels, ran drugs across the border and chauffeured dignitaries, battled his indulgences and managed nightclubs, was beaten down by the status quo and hammered nails in the hot Texas sun before finally taking the great leap of pursuing his own music.

The rise of Higgins to the Lone Star musical honor roll with his new solo album has been portended by the notice given to The Dust Devils, the Hill Country-based band he has led on guitar and vocals with his wife and musical partner Barbara Malteze on keyboards and vocals. Over the course of three albums, countless gigs, a loyal legion of fans known as “Stormchasers”, airplay on XM satellite radio, Americana and Texas Music chart stations, an annual festival known as the “Coastal Bender”, and a healthy press and music industry buzz over the last decade or so, the group has become one of the most notable grassroots success stories in the state. And along the way, collecting three Texas Music Awards in 2006, having his song “Company Time” placed in the politically provocative film A Day Without A Mexican and included on its EMI Records soundtrack album, Higgins has been hailed as “quite possibly the next great Texas songwriter" (RockzillaWorld.net), “a gifted songwriter” (Denver Post) and “one of the most talented songwriters around” (MyTexasMusic.com); noted Grammy-winning producer and musician Barry Beckett, member of the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio rhythm section heard on scores of legendary hit recordings, observed how “Kevin sings from the soul and his songs speak the truth” after working with The Dust Devils.

But something even greater was percolating in Higgins’ songwriting.

“In November the year before last, Barbara said to me: Why don’t you just write without being concerned about record sales and radio play and all the trappings we find ourselves in and just write?” Higgins explains. “So I did — wrote just for the sake of writing. It was great. And really cathartic to be able to cleanse the soul and do that for art and enjoyment and all the things it should be about.”

A club booker friend introduced Higgins to Austin producer Stephen Doster, whose many musical endeavors include being Nanci Griffith's musical director and collaborating with James Honeyman-Scott of The Pretenders. “When I first heard Kevin Higgins’ songs I was absolutely knocked out,” he recalls. He gathered with Higgins and Malteze and a blue-ribbon roster of Austin players in East Austin Recording Studios for an inspired set of analog sessions recorded in seven days resulting in Find Your Shine. Practically all the lead vocal tracks were captured in one take.

“I believe this is an important record that needed to be made,” says Doster. And in doing so, Find Your Shine showcases a notable songwriting presence on the Texas and American roots music scene.

Audiences from New York to New Mexico and Nashville to Austin, thrilled by Find Your Shine, have hailed Kevin Higgins as the new standard-bearer of contemporary folk.

Album annotator Patterson feels similarly. “This is timeless and endlessly fulfilling music in which you can Find Your Shine and so much more.” Listen and you are bound to agree.