Favorite Son is back and firing on all cylinders after a lengthy hiatus. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Favorite Son copy
Country-rock quartet Favorite Son’s debut album Juniper has been a long time coming. A dozen years to be exact.
The San Antonio band’s earliest shows took place at the late, lamented Imagine Books and Records, and by 2013, things were really starting to move into place.
However, life took Cooper Greenberg, Favorite Son’s singer, guitarist and primary songwriter, away from the Alamo City, putting the band on hiatus and leading him to release solo albums until his 2019 return.
In between, the members got together for periodic gigs, most centered around live renditions of Greenberg’s solo work.
With Greenberg now back in town and Favorite Son back to regular gigging, the members late last year decided to commit to recording an album of original material. The end result, Juniper, is worth the trials and sidetracks that kept the band on hiatus for so long, Greenberg told the Current.
“There’s some songs on here that have been ideas for a really long time,” Greenberg said. “This is finally when the time and the means to record something all came together.”
The album by Greenberg and bandmates Ramon Botello on guitar, Andres Ovalle on drums and Joseph Cantu on bass offers a solid introduction to the band in the form of eight songs steeped in traditional country ethos and Southern rock riffs. But the influences don’t end there. The material also leans heavily into ’70s grooves, soul, blues and folk with the musicians’ jam-band tendencies sometimes percolating up.
It’s quite a concoction to take in, but Favorite Son make it their own. Juniper’s myriad components come together in a toe-tapping flow. It simultaneously manages to remain fresh while comforting and familiar.
Musical friends
The group’s core members weren’t alone in creating the album, however. It also features guest vocals from Isabel Paillao and Brandon Padier, bandmates of Greenberg’s through his work in Chavela and The Texases, respectively. Anthony Soriano contributes saxophone and Jordan Stern pedal steel.
Favorite Son is celebrating the album release with a Friday, Nov. 7 performance at the Lonesome Rose. The venue is somewhat of a second home to Greenberg, who plays there often as a solo artist and as a member of The Texases, a supergroup of local country musicians playing classic covers.
“We’ve got a bunch of friends playing with us that night,” Greenberg said of the release show. “A lot of those people have played on the record, so it’ll be a nice fun, group jam. We’re playing through the album and some of our older stuff. I’d like to get all the friends involved in this.”
To that end, Jerid Morris — another of Greenberg’s bandmates in The Texases — will open the night with his band Very Old Morris.
‘The guys who brought guitars to school’
Favorite Son began as a teenage project between Greenberg and Botello. The two were introduced while attending Health Careers High School.
“We just met there and were the guys who brought guitars to school,” Greenberg said. “At lunch we’d jam. Ramon knew Andres [Ovalle] and we’d jam with him. At first, it was me on guitar, Ramon [Botello] on bass, and Andres on drums, and then we met Joseph [Cantu]. He and Andres went to St. Mary’s and were jazz guys.”
The quartet jumped into gigging without having chosen a name.
“Our band went through a lot of different names beforehand — Dr. Crab, Catfish Johnson and the Hushpuppies — a lot of bad names,” Greenberg said. “And then we wanted to go play shows, and we asked what are we going to call ourselves? I said, ‘I’ve got the name: Favorite Son.’ It works.”
The name stems from Greenberg’s relationship with his father.
“My dad always called me ‘favorite son of a favorite son’ because he and I are both only sons,” he explained. “My grandpa was an only son. It worked out that we’re all favorite sons.”
While the writing on Juniper is credited to Greenberg, the album credits the material to being “performed by Favorite Son.”
“Everybody has a lot of creative power and everybody’s sound is a little different,” Greenberg said of the band’s members. “[The songs] all started with a riff or chord progression, but each member added their own piece. They fill it out in creative and cool ways. Most of them started instrumentally, and they were built out in the months before and in the studio.”
With inspiration as diverse as Wilco, Radiohead, Steely Dan, Sturgill Simpson and Marvin Gaye, Greenberg receives influence from a vast swath of genres and eras.
That’s yielded some interesting comparisons. Greenberg’s brother-in-law described him as “Blonde Zappa” after hearing the harmonized riff that shaped the song “Flamingo,” while the album’s recording engineer said its title track sounded as if “Radiohead was from West Texas.”
For all the diversity of Favorite Son’s influences, Greenberg said the collaborative process helps create something new.
“You write something yourself and you play it by yourself so many times, and you kind of get numb to it,” he said. “And the first time someone says, ‘Let’s layer this on there,’ it reawakens and [you] realize this is a cool song.”
$10, 9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7, Lonesome Rose, 2114 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 455-0233, thelonesomerose.com.
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