by Thom JurekTexas songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard pushed life to the margin and lived to sing about it. In the process, his songs now possess the tenderness of a poet, the empathy of a historian, and the raw nerve of a card shark. On 2009s A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There Is No C), he adds mythmaker to his songwriting qualities. Hubbard strips his music to the bone here, and uses the Mississippi Delta blues tradition to his own ends. His music is raw yet utterly contemporary and crafted. Snarling acoustic, slide, and electric guitars played bottleneck style, dirty mandolins, pots, pans, stomp boxes, basses, organs, harmoniums, drums, rattles, shakers, and tambourines are the instruments that fuel this impressive collection. On Down Home Country Blues, Hubbard is visceral, and you can feel it in your belly bone: Sugars got some sweetness to it as do my babys lips\u002FWhen she hears some ole Howlin Wolf, shes got to move her hips...Im partial to Hooker, playing 'Crawlin King Snake'\u002FI can say that Muddy Waters is as deep as William Blake. Blues is the backbone of Hubbards sound here, but it's not the only one. Drunken Poets Dream (written with Hayes Carll) sounds like Rimbaud singing Americana in a honky tonk: I got a woman whos wild as Rome\u002FShe likes bein naked and gazed upon\u002FShe crosses a bridge and sets it on fire\u002FShe lands like a bird on a telephone wire\u002FTheres some money on the table\u002FTheres a gun on the floor\u002FTheres some paperback books by Louis LAmour.... ...