The Lawless is another exquisitely crafted CD by Kevin Deal and released by Blind Nello Records.  The songs have that familiar, but on the edge Lone Star feel, like the smell of heat baked Texas dirt, and these songs are packed just as tight and solid as that earth.  From the first cut, "Quicker than the Eye", to the last, "Road to Ruin", Deal sends you on a sun-kissed, sage scented, dusty trail journey of the state that Texans love to call home.  Lloyd Maines placed his impeccable production touch upon this effort, and Deal authored all but three of the selections.  Also playing literal musical chairs were Freddie Spears, James Perkins, Jonny Jackson, Paul Percy, Lloyd Maines, Terri Hendrix, Richard Bowden, Glenn Fukunaga, Adam Odor, Bob Penhall, and Fritz Schultz in a variety of instrumentation and vocal combinations too numerous to mention here.

Deal’s music is intricately woven through the stories he tells.  The real gems are the pictures he paints through those delicate combinations.  The stories are dressed in rough cloth and crude finery, but that’s just enticement to see what lies beneath this intriguing subterfuge. He rollicks to western tales and waltzes through pristine ballads.  There is no one trademark of his style; Deal handles them all with skill and makes them sparkle.  As the title implies, there are plenty of dust-filled tales of outlaws, rebels, and those on the road.  Western tales of yore or modern trucking, all play a major role in this collection.  It draws you in and won’t let you go.  Just like the wise old spider, sometimes brutally, sometimes gently, Deal puts you out of your misery within the web he spins.

"Quicker than the Eye" gives you a fast-paced glimpse of life’s lessons set in a frontier gambling frame.  "Don’t ever gamble with strangers. Chances are you got no chance at all" pretty much sums up the lesson to be learned.

"You Ain’t Nobody" throws you into today’s world of cliché excuses we all hear hundreds of times a week.  The opening line is classic, "Success has many fathers/failure has few." Everybody wants credit when it works; but no one takes the rap when it falls apart.

The title track, "The Lawless", is another quick-paced western ballad that spins the yarn of a boy that just couldn’t do right.  "Some do it for the money, he does it for the thrill.  Takes what he wants, lets the world pay the bill."

"Asleep at the Wheel" provides a deep throated haunting lament about poor sleepy souls of the highway; no matter to which of life’s highways you refer.  "He already knows what he’ll find at the scene.  Some weary pilgrim who dreamt his last dream."