As he hits the road with his sophomore release, the Walt Wilkins-produced MIGHTY RIDER, new audiences and fans are discovering what some pretty discerning critics already recognized; Jeff Posey is a songwriter with something to say. The Academy of Texas Music honored Posey’s debut album with two Texas Music Awards nominations including Album of the Year in 2006. He is also a two-time finalist in the Kerrville Folk Festival’s New Folk competition and in 2009, along with co-writer Mike Blakely, Posey garnered a coveted Spur Award Nomination by Western Writers of America for Best Original Western Song. While his music was still “on the sidelines”, the Fort Worth songwriter managed to produce an impressive collection of songs recorded and performed by other talented Texas and Red Dirt artists. It should be no surprise then that with music now at the forefront, Posey’s ground-breaking second release (stunningly produced by Wilkins) is, as Wilkins describes it, “a bold artistic statement”. MIGHTY RIDER tackles love and loss, fear and doubt, faith and spirituality, beauty and desolation, soul-searching and redemption with honesty and empathy that is earned by living it…for several decades. Equally refreshing is the occasional wink and nod delivered with beautiful understatement by Posey and Wilkins in the midst of some heavy subject matter. It is as if they want to remind the listener that this is supposed to be fun. And it is. There are tracks on MIGHTY RIDER that will surely find a home on Texas radio, but do not count Posey among the dozens of homogenous, 20-30 something-year-old artists dominating the Texas Music charts. There are no testosterone infused electric guitar solos, no screaming rock vocals, and no clichés on MIGHTY RIDER. Refreshingly, this work takes a step back to the more intellectually fertile ground plowed, planted and harvested by artists like Guy Clark, Tom Russell and Neil Young. If you must assign a “genre”, file Posey under Americana; perfectly comfortable out on the fringes of singer-songwriter, cowboy, folk, and Texas Country...not necessarily in that order.