Shakewelle Deluxe by Bob Cummins Jr.

Somewhere among DFW’s healthy stock of indie guitar bands, rising rap stars, and Americana crooners stands a lone piano man singer/songwriter with a penchant for unusual sounds. That’s Bob Cummins Jr. He softly, quietly made landfall in local clubs with Watering, a bright but brief flash of a formative rock band that, after rejecting a notable indie label's offer, unceremoniously ended and left Cummins to release a solo debut in what turned out to be the darkest summer of the early pandemic.

Although that LP, Shakewelle, went under most everyone’s radar, it showcased Cummins’s skill at crafting resonating lyrics that drip words along a trail of arcane chord progressions, honey sweet harmonies, and melodies that evoke the cream of the crop of 60s and 70s singer/songwriters (no doubt an influence of his former mentor, Don Henley sideman Chris Holt).

Shakewelle has been given a new life with an expanded edition re-release through Portland, Oregon’s Big Secret Records, a victory lap for Cummins after becoming the fifth Beatle for several emerging artists in or with ties to DFW. While writing his second album, he joined Austin’s Kind Keith on stage and played on the follow up to his buzz-worthy 2021 album. He also found himself alongside members of Midlake as an active member of Harry Zimm and contributor of piano and synth textures to the score for Dallas horror film 13 Tracks to Frighten Agatha Black along with Midlake's/Pneumatic Tubes' Jesse Chandler. Cummins can also be found at Denton’s Echo Lab studio where he’s sat in with Brooklyn’s Closebye on their debut album and with NPR darling Amari Amore on her first full-length LP.

Cummins’s current stack of songs (he’s got his sophomore release in the can already) tap out one person’s slow waltz toward self-realization in an arrested world — a portrait of one artist in the weirdest time of any of our lives.

Bob Cummins Jr. is a Dallas singer-songwriter who bridges the musical gap between when the Beach Boys found drugs and the release of the Nintendo 64.