Hayes Carll is an odd mix. Wildly literate, utterly slackerly, impossibly romantic, absolutely a slave to the music, the 35-year old Texan is completely committed to the truth and unafraid to skewer pomposity, hypocrisy and small-minded thinking. In a world of shallow and shallower, where it’s all groove and gloss, that might seem a hopeless proposition. “Another Like You,” Carll’s polar-opposites attraction duet, was American Songwriter’s #1 Song of 2011–and KMAG YOYO was the Americana Music Association’s #1 Album, as well as making Best of Lists for Rolling Stone, SPIN, and The New York Times. But more importantly than the critical acclaim is the way Hayes connects with music lovers across genre lines. Playing rock clubs and honkytonks, Bonnaroo, Stones Fest, SXSW and NXNE, he and his band the Gulf Coast Orchestra merge Ray Wylie Hubband’s lean freewheeling squalor with Todd Snider’s brazen Gen Y reality and a healthy dose of love among unhealthy people. “I guess you could say I write degenerate love songs,” Carll says. “That, and songs about people who’re wedged between not much and even less; people who see how hopeless it is and somehow make it work anyway. “And the best kind of irony, sometimes, is applying no irony and letting reality do the work.” Maybe it’s the influences–Kerouac, Dylan, Guy Clark, John Prine, Hubbard ... Maybe it’s the fact that somebody has to say something ...Maybe it’s just the fact that some people are born to play. But for whatever reason, ten years into a recording career, Hayes Carll shows no signs of having arrived at his creative apex.