Album Review – Wynn Williams – “Country Therapy”
Traditional Country (#510) on the Country DDS.
If you’re a fan of the sensible but traditional country songs of guys like Cody Johnson and Randall King, Wynn Williams released the album in 2025 that should’ve been on your radar, by maybe wasn’t. It’s called Country Therapy, and there’s perhaps not a better way to describe how country music can cure whatever ails you often better than whatever drug cocktail or therapy sessions come recommended by your HMO.
Similar to many of the traditionalists within country music’s ranks, the Wynn Williams story starts in the rodeo. Originally from Weatherford just west of Fort Worth, TX, he was a steer wrestler in his younger days. But as most anyone in the rodeo will tell you, that’s a young man’s game. So after graduating from Texas A&M in 2016, Wynn took his lifetime love for performers like George Strait and Brooks & Dunn, and launched a traditional country music career.
Deciding to become a traditional country artist might not take the same kind of muscle as rustling steers. But it takes perhaps even more courage, especially in the late 2010s when Williams hatched the idea. In 2020, Wynn Williams released a self-titled album, and saw the opening song “Tornado” take off. His 2023 EP Your Love had another hit in “Like She Does” with Kylie Frey.
Now with a strong regional following in Texas and surrounding areas, Wynn Williams recorded and released an album that deserves to have a national impact. Country Therapy takes little or no warming up to. From the opening title track on, it immediately endears itself with ample fiddle and steel guitar, but not in a way that would turn off the pop country audience. It’s an album everyone on the family trip or carpool can find agreeable.
That agreeable nature extends to the songwriting as well, optimizing universal favorability. Writing or co-writing multiple songs including one of the album’s standout tracks in “The Same,” Williams also co-wrote or raided the catalogs of folks like Brice Long, Jeff Hyde, Rhett Atkins, Carson Chamberlain, Keith Stegall, and Dean Dillon to find the best songs for the album. The album also includes a rendition of “Diamonds Make Babies” co-written by Chris Stapleton, and original recorded by Dierks Bentley.
What Country Therapy might lack is the grit and heartache you’re used to in a lot of traditional country music. Wynn Williams loves to sing about his wife, and songs like “A Woman Can Do That to a Man,” “Hear You Say It,” and “She Ain’t You” gives the album a somewhat soft, subservient feel that might be what women love to hear, but makes boyfriends and husbands roll their eyes. But you also feel like these songs come straight from Wynn’s heart and real life experience, even when written by others.
Williams helps round it all out though with the final song on the album. If George Strait could record the rowdy and ribald Wayne Kemp and Mack Vickery-written “The Fireman,” then so can Wynn Williams. This assures you that Williams is willing to unbutton his top collar at times. But it also speaks to how Wynn could maybe use a bit more originality and depth in his songs to take his music to the next level.
What Wynn Williams and Country Therapy have right is the chemistry to make country music that immediately warms you to the virtues of the genre, and proves you don’t need machine beats, fluffy choruses, or bubble gum lyrics to make country music that’s easily enjoyable. The Deluxe Edition of the album released in December also includes a duet with Randall King on “Here for the Beer.”
7.8/10
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Stream/Download Country Therapy (Deluxe Edition)
December 29, 2025 @ 7:39 pm
One of my favorite releases of 2025! “It’s an album everyone on the family trip or carpool can find agreeable” can’t say that much these days with country artists constantly chasing references to sex, drugs, and infidelity. This is a breath of fresh air
December 30, 2025 @ 6:24 am
D**N!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A real cowboy!!!!!! Anyway,hopefully 2026 is Wynn’s breakout year.
December 30, 2025 @ 7:48 am
Traditional country has never been my thing at all, mostly because it seems like the music portion and the arrangements are simply there to support vocals. It simply does not create longevity and durability for me. It means you have to have either the best voice or an incredibly well written song for it to have staying power.
Does anyone have any suggestions of any traditional country albums where they have some creative and nuanced arrangements? I would love to give this genre a try.
December 30, 2025 @ 8:51 am
RJ,
Thats an interesting take. Perhaps your of a rock background and alt- country/ Americana is your wheelhouse? I was raised on radio country in the eighties and I also heard everything that came before that. I lean heavily toward the traditional model of honky- tonk which would be the fiddle, steel, telecaster styled. Bluegrass as well. ( yet im a rock fan also) Creativity means different things to different people. Instrumentally speaking, to me that 90s sound with musicians like Brent Mason and company shredding all over Alan Jackson songs like I Don’t Even Know Your Name, and Chatahoochee, or the Brooks and Dunn stuff is incredibly creative.
I think Marty Stuarts work in the last 20 years has been super creative and nuanced, yet he remains a force as a guy rooted in traditional. I consider George Straits work, particularly his western swing styled songs to be epic. Willie Nelson is at heart a traditional artist, but his albums are incredibly diverse and run the gamut of styles instrumentally. Dwight Yoakams work to me is superb instrumentally and creatively. The album This Time is a masterpiece for example. Jake Worthington, Sunny Sweeney, Jamey Johnson are good modern examples of traditionally based yet creative in approach, at least in my estimation. But tastes vary, I acknowledge that.
December 30, 2025 @ 8:51 am
To me, “The Price of Admission” by the Turnpike Troubadours is a perfect example of this. Though most of their previous albums were more country rock/Red Dirt with some traditional country moments, “The Price of Admission” feels like a traditional country album, just with those nuances in composition and songwriting you’re looking for.
December 31, 2025 @ 3:38 am
…perhaps you wanna give dwight yoakam’s album “gone” (1995) a try, rj. my personal (creative) yard stick of what country music can be and how far you can take it in terms of style(s) and sounds without losing it. or you might wanto to follow kevin smith’s recommendation “this time”, which is as good a point to start with.
December 31, 2025 @ 8:19 am
Thanks everyone! I have thoroughly enjoyed much of Dwight Yoakam’s catalogue. Trigger mentioned the troubadours, but I don’t really consider them to be what I am talking about specifically. I guess I should have been more clear about that traditional (kind of 90’s sound) was where I struggle to engage.
I go back to The Earth Rolls On by Shaver as the quintessential example of creativity and arrangement, variation in sound from song to song, and especially how Eddie has a different sound for nearly every song on that album. Compared to that to the host of albums that were reviewed this year with that 90s country sound – it seems like the band was hired for that day and although they are extremely talented, they’re just isn’t much nuance in it. Similarly, every time a Turnpike album comes out, I cross all of my fingers hoping that we get a different guitar sound and it just doesn’t happen.
December 31, 2025 @ 9:34 am
Gone is an unbelievable masterpiece. I don’t think of it as truly traditional like his earlier ones are but it’s a career height for an artist with some phenomenal albums.
December 31, 2025 @ 11:23 am
I’ll have to check this album out, as I like Tornado and some others of his.
January 8, 2026 @ 8:27 am
Wynn has a great voice and I love Bruce Bouton’s pedal steel.
Excellent album.
January 12, 2026 @ 12:08 pm
Great album and heck of a nice guy! Saw him play at Coupland Dance Hall. Chatted with him at his merch booth afterwards and bought this cd. He went to hand it to me, pulled it away, autographed it and then handed it back to me. I had already heard the songCountry Therapy but my favorite is She Ain’t You. Just a well written, well performed song. The fade out and fade in at the end for a guitar solo that ultimately ends the track reminds me of Journey, in a way. Odd to say that about a country song but there it is.