Don't bother shaving off the five o'clock shadow when you head out to Chuck Ragan And The Camaraderie's show tonight at The Showbox—your stubble is going to look great with those dad jeans and the western shirt that you keep in the back of the closet for just such an occasion. Just waltz on in with your gruff exterior, soften up your insides with some cheap swill and let the sing, er, rather, shout-along, begin. Ragan is on tour with a new band and a new album called Till Midnight, and the Springsteen vibe is stong on his latest. He's headed up the Revival Tour for the last few years and seems to have called up every one of the contacts he made and set up an alt-country-all-star backing band on his new album, though I have a feeling that the pistol in the pocket is the opening band.

Like Chuck Ragan, Jake Smith is the product of an all-american music diet, from gospel and blues, to rock and punk, and while his music as The White Buffalo rocks an outlaw country feel, it kowtows to no genre. His album Shadows, Greys, and Evil Ways starts out gentle as the breeze and finishes like a stampede, but more importantly his music does the job so few contemporary country albums do: it fights against the current of pop-country, soft-rock bullshit that has the whole musical style up shit creek.