Album Review – Pug Johnson’s “From a Beaumont Bar”

Honky Tonk (#510.2) on the Country DDS.

It’s not uncommon these days for new country songs coming down the pike to sound like the country songs of old. We’ve been so fortunate to experience a rebirth of the tones and modes that originally made country music so great. But the problem is that so often, these songs still don’t feel like the songs of old. Even when they get the general sentiments right, they still don’t have the same pull on the soul of the old classics because the intent is to emulate instead of putting forth the effort to find new ways to express very old feelings and experiences.

There’s nothing unique about releasing a country album full of drinking and heartbreak songs, in 1976 or 2026. The key is doing so and not allow the songs and overall experience to feel like one big cliché. How do you accomplish what those country songs of the past did, which was put you in the throes of someone else’s misery or muddled thoughts, making you feel a little less lonely in your own?

Pug Johnson has never been one for serving up traditional country in a conventional manner. On his 2025 album El Cabron, he spiced things up by sprinkling some Tejano and Cajun influences in. His third album From a Beaumont Bar also comes with some unique flavoring with the regular presence of accordion. But more importantly, Pug presides over a parade of country songs that feel like classics, only ones you’ve never heard before, challenging your memory banks to recall if you’ve heard this one or that one before only to find out that no, they were written by Pug himself.

Johnson actually decides to start this album off with a very obvious cover in the form of “Bubbles in My Beer” originally written by Bob Wills and Cindy Walker, and covered by, well, just about everybody. But the way he renders the song extra slow, with a thumping bass line defining the melody first, before leisurely letting the rest of the band creep in, it really sets the mood for a record that often feels like it’s about to fall off a barstool, with its eyelids parked at half mast.

Though Pug currently lives out in the Texas Hill Country, he’s originally from the Beaumont area back east, and imbues every single one of these tracks with experiences lived in those lowly dive bars. He soaked up the scenes and stories, and lived through many of them on his own. What this results in is drinking and heartbreak songs, but ones run through a prism of lived experiences and perspectives, making for a stark array of songs that hit you square in the chest instead of only scoring glancing shots.

What’s even more cool is Pug Johnson enlivens the experience by adding a few of these little musical vignettes that come across like unfinished songs, previews of alternative versions, or introductions. Perhaps Pug did not make a concept album either on purpose or by accident. But what he did do was break up the monotony of so many traditional country albums that just serve the songs straight with little vision, allowing the experience to feel somewhat listless, even when it includes strong songs.

You can tell Pug Johnson cared about how From a Beaumont Bar came together, and how being called the “Best kept secret in Texas” can be limiting as a term of endearment. You can forgive the somewhat cliché moments of songs like “Shuckin’ and Jivin'” due to the way he gets some of the little details just right with it, or “Lowering The Bar” in how it’s willing to self-deprecate. But it’s songs like the super heartbreaking “Tucson,” the immediate honky tonk classic “Second Chances,” and “If I Told You” that evokes feelings of peak era Willie Nelson that put this album in rare company.

The presence of steel guitar player Caleb Melo really elevates the songs as well, as does the menagerie of other players Pug pulls together as his own producer to present his drunken fever dream like a dive bar opera.

8.3/10

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Stream/purchase From a Beaumont Bar