Album Review – Muchacho Sanchez – “When I Get This Way”

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Classic Country (#510.1) on the Country DDS. AI = “Clean”

If you love the sounds of early Charley Crockett and wish that country music had been frozen in a stasis during its greatness of the Golden Era of the ’50s, you’ll immediately warm up to what Muchacho Sanchez has cooked up with his debut album When I Get This Way. If you also admire the way performers like Freddy Fender and Johnny Rodriguez honored the timeless sounds of country, but brought their own distinct Hispanic flavor to the music, When I Get This Way will be even more up your alley.

The debut album for Muchacho Sanchez has been a long time coming. After growing up in both Los Angeles and the Mexican state of Durango, he spent years living out of an RV and busking on street corners as a musician before landing in Austin, TX. He began making regular appearances in and around town at places like The Saxon Pub, Riley’s Tavern, out at Luckenbach, and more recently at Sagebrush. He boasts having played 110 shows in 2025 alone, but a proper recorded album alluded him.

If Muchacho was going to finally make an album, he was going to make it right. And when you’re in Austin, TX and classic country is your poison, Billy Horton is who you give a ring, and hope that guitar player Dave Biller is also available. Along with all those great Charley Crockett records, Billy and Biller are guys that have worked with folks like Theo Lawrence and the Sentimental Family Band to evoke that classic country sound.

When I Get This Way is one of those records that it only takes a few seconds in to confirm you made the right choice with your time. The tones, the style, the voice all sit right with you from go. There’s no attempt to reinvent the wheel. There’s the embrace of the timeless country sound, and Muchacho’s voice is super easy to warm up to—pleasantly absent of put-ons or inflections, giving this music a pure and honest feeling.



Muchacho Sanchez writes all his own songs. And though nothing gets too complex and one might even charge the writing at times with being elementary, each song comes with a strong central theme and premise. The opening song “First Mind” is a clever idea to build a song around. “My Father’s Chains” is hard to not feel for those who carry a familial burden around, whatever version that might take on. The Western-tinged “Man Who Kept His Word” shows Sanchez’s propensity for storytelling.

It’s the economy of words, and the simplicity of the writing that becomes endearing, and authentic to the classic country approach that never got too involved poetically or loquacious, and instead focused on everyman joys and struggles. This lyrical approach marries perfectly with the sounds and modes ever-present on the album, and you really just can’t say enough about Dave Biller’s playing, and Billy Horton’s ear.

Overall, When I Get This Way is just a great listening record. It’s an album you put on and let play continuously, and it brightens the mood and atmosphere. If anything, Muchacho Sanchez could have brought more of his distinct Hispanic perspective to the table. But there is always time for that in the future. For now, you appreciate his revival of Golden Era country.

8/10

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