After two live albums recorded at their Sunday home of Austin’s Continental Club, Heybale gives us their first studio album, The Last Country Album. And it is everything those that miss “real country music” demand.

Made up of veteran musicians Earl Poole Ball (piano and vocals), Redd Volkaert (guitar and vocals), Tom Lewis (drums), Kevin Smith (stand-up bass) and Gary Claxton (the relative newcomer in the group on vocals), Heybale takes you through the great styles in country music from Western Swing to honky-tonk, while still producing a cohesive and tight set.

The Last Country Album draws a few songs from the country music catalog including Willie Nelson’s “Mr. Record Man,” Tom T. Hall’s “That’s How I Got To Memphis, “Hang Your Head In Shame,” covered most famously by Red Foley and Bob Wills, and “Step Aside,” the Ray Griff penned, Faron Young crooned lament. It’s not surprising that a band that has had an eight-year standing gig at a place like the Continental Club would be adept at covering the classics, but their versions breath new life into the well-worn tunes.

But the biggest treat, aside from Volkaert’s tasty and tasteful Tele pickin’, is the originals on the album. Ball, who has spent time behind the piano with Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash and behind the production boards with artists like Stoney Edwards (never heard of him? Look him up, you’ll thank me), contributes four songs to the mix. The bouncy “Livin’ In A Cheap Motel” sounds like a lost classic track from country’s ‘70s era Nashville as the singer laments where his life has taken him, but reminds himself not to judge himself by the company he keeps.

Two of Ball’s songs on the album are co-writes, one with Deion Lay, “Everything…About Drinkin’,” the other with Claxton, “Let’s Go To Mexico.” “Mexico,” is to me the weakest track on the record, but on a record this strong, that’s not too bad.

Claxton’s songwriting is strong and an undiscovered gem. Starting off with “Guess Where I’ll Be This Morning,” Claxton introduces us to both his strong songwriting and his versatile pure country voice. If you are sold on this record by the time you hit the third song, “California Wine,” a co-write between Claxton and Volkaert, you might as well give up on calling yourself a country music fan. The songwriting on “Wine” is full of subtlety and Claxton’s nuanced vocal performance punctuated by Volkaert’s spot on accents put this song on the top of the country heap. Singing about life as a rambler, taking after the father he rarely saw, Claxton, and the character, sounds like he could be the lost son of Merle Haggard. On “House of Secrets” Claxton croons with the best of them on this tale of cheating that twists with emotion and hidden feeling.

For The Last Country Album Heybale also recruits help from Cindy Cashdollar and Tommy Detamore on pedal steel and Elana James and Erik Hokkanen on fiddles. With such musicianship, the group had to include an honest-to-God real life country instrumental, something you don’t hear too much of these days and “Heybalin’” is made for dancing.

The bottom line is this: if all of the people who like to sit around and lament the loss of real country would turn off the mainstream radio and lay down their money for The Last Country Album, it would be a million seller. As it should be.

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