{"id":355664,"date":"2025-11-04T19:12:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T19:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/355664\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T19:12:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T19:12:15","slug":"years-in-the-making-san-antonios-favorite-son-releases-long-awaited-debut-album-juniper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/355664\/","title":{"rendered":"Years in the Making: San Antonio\u2019s Favorite Son releases long-awaited debut album Juniper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FavoriteFavorite Son is back and firing on all cylinders after a lengthy hiatus. Credit: Courtesy Photo \/ Favorite Son copy<\/p>\n

Country-rock quartet Favorite Son\u2019s debut album Juniper has been a long time coming. A dozen years to be exact.<\/p>\n

The San Antonio band\u2019s earliest shows took place at the late, lamented Imagine Books and Records, and by 2013, things were really starting to move into place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, life took Cooper Greenberg, Favorite Son\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

In between, the members got together for periodic gigs, most centered around live renditions of Greenberg\u2019s solo work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s some songs on here that have been ideas for a really long time,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cThis is finally when the time and the means to record something all came together.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019t end there. The material also leans heavily into \u201970s grooves, soul, blues and folk with the musicians\u2019 jam-band tendencies sometimes percolating up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s quite a concoction to take in, but Favorite Son make it their own. Juniper\u2019s myriad components come together in a toe-tapping flow. It simultaneously manages to remain fresh while comforting and familiar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Musical friends<\/strong><\/p>\n

The group\u2019s core members weren\u2019t alone in creating the album, however. It also features guest vocals from Isabel Paillao and Brandon Padier, bandmates of Greenberg\u2019s through his work in Chavela and The Texases, respectively. Anthony Soriano contributes saxophone and Jordan Stern pedal steel.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a bunch of friends playing with us that night,\u201d Greenberg said of the release show. \u201cA lot of those people have played on the record, so it\u2019ll be a nice fun, group jam. We\u2019re playing through the album and some of our older stuff. I\u2019d like to get all the friends involved in this.\u201d<\/p>\n

To that end, Jerid Morris \u2014\u00a0another of Greenberg\u2019s bandmates in The Texases \u2014\u00a0will open the night with his band Very Old Morris.<\/p>\n

\u2018The guys who brought guitars to school\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Favorite Son began as a teenage project between Greenberg and Botello. The two were introduced while attending Health Careers High School.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just met there and were the guys who brought guitars to school,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cAt lunch we\u2019d jam. Ramon knew Andres [Ovalle] and we\u2019d 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\u2019s and were jazz guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

The quartet jumped into gigging without having chosen a name.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur band went through a lot of different names beforehand \u2014 Dr. Crab, Catfish Johnson and the Hushpuppies \u2014\u00a0a lot of bad names,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cAnd then we wanted to go play shows, and we asked what are we going to call ourselves? I said, \u2018I\u2019ve got the name: Favorite Son.\u2019 It works.\u201d<\/p>\n

The name stems from Greenberg\u2019s relationship with his father.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad always called me \u2018favorite son of a favorite son\u2019 because he and I are both only sons,\u201d he explained. \u201cMy grandpa was an only son. It worked out that we\u2019re all favorite sons.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the writing on Juniper is credited to Greenberg, the album credits the material to being \u201cperformed by Favorite Son.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody has a lot of creative power and everybody\u2019s sound is a little different,\u201d Greenberg said of the band\u2019s members. \u201c[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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s yielded some interesting comparisons. Greenberg\u2019s brother-in-law described him as \u201cBlonde Zappa\u201d after hearing the harmonized riff that shaped the song \u201cFlamingo,\u201d while the album\u2019s recording engineer said its title track sounded as if \u201cRadiohead was from West Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n

For all the diversity of Favorite Son\u2019s influences, Greenberg said the collaborative process helps create something new.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou write something yourself and you play it by yourself so many times, and you kind of get numb to it,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the first time someone says, \u2018Let\u2019s layer this on there,\u2019 it reawakens and [you] realize this is a cool song.\u201d<\/p>\n

$10, 9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7, Lonesome Rose, 2114 N. St. Mary\u2019s St., (210) 455-0233, thelonesomerose.com.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to SA Current newsletters.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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