EXCLUSIVE: Pug Johnson Premieres the Video for 'El Cabron' and Announces New Album for March 2025

"Hey, hey, I gotta thing For them Singapore Slings and I'm drinking more and more with each day," sings Pug Johnson as the titular character from his forthcoming album, El Cabron, due out in March next year.

He's been racking up his bar tab and generally getting on the wrong side of people so long he's leaving Texas for Mexico on an amphetamine fuelled solo road trip to make a nuisance of himself down there for a while.

"I carried the first half of this one around for a while before I decided to call in my 'Rancho Cucamonga' co-writer Tyler Darby to help me finish it," explained Johnson. "I never expected it to be the song that would tie a record together, but bastards will do that sometimes."

"Purely a work of fiction, this narrator is more of an amalgam of characters that have influenced my writing (e.g. Hunter S. Thompson, Terry Allen, Augustus McCrae) and a continuation of the 'Rancho Cucamonga' narrator. The first line is a direct reference to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the overall theme of “running down to Mexico” is an old and recurring theme in Texan lore. Hell, Lonesome Dove kicks off with a trip to Mexico to steal stock."

Growing up on the outskirts of Beaumont, Texas, listening to the multicultural soundtrack of a city flanked by Louisiana, the Big Thicket, and the Gulf Coast, those influences resurface on the first taste of the follow up to 2022's critically acclaimed Throwed Off and Glad. The forthcoming album finds the songwriter saluting his Texas roots while also delivering universal songs about the American everyman.

The album's central character - El Cabron himself - is a recurring devil-on-your-shoulder that Pug Johnson created a whole world for, running up bar tabs on both sides of the Mexican border, evoking personalities from Lonesome Dove's Gus McCrae to Hunter S. Thompson and the flawed protagonists in John Prine's songs. Rooted in equal parts fiction and autobiography, that character becomes the unlikely hero of El Cabron, highlighting the wry, witty songwriting of one of Texas' finest who has shared shows with Steve Earle, Eli Young Band, Midland and Hayes Carll. In the title track to the album, El Cabron jacks a car from someone who closely resembles Raoul Duke before setting off on a possibly ill-advised road trip of his own.

"I found Terry Allen’s Juarez around the time the set list for this album was taking shape, and I realized that similarly to Johnny Bush’s Green Snakes, that theme ran through the album. I realized that my set list for this album fit a similar bill. As we started to get these tracks laid down, it became clear that El Cabron' was the theme song for the character of the album. Musically, this song takes all of the influences that we were trying to touch on with the album and puts them together for something familiar but unique."

The songs on El Cabron are simple yet three-dimensional, offering vivid glimpses into the stories and thoughts of characters who all tend to run on pure instinct, unable to escape their own depravity, all the while displaying a deep sense of self-awareness. Intertwining personal stories with fiction, the singer explores themes of corruption, desire, perseverance, love, loss, and then love again. Pulling as always, from a wide variety of musical genres prevalent in the Southeast Texas region he calls home, he effortlessly mixes Tejano, Zydeco, Texas Swing, Honky-Tonk, R&B, Dixieland and down-home Rock and Roll -- all delivered with a voice that is pure Texas country.

Watch the video for 'El Cabron' directed by Payton Ware exclusively on Holler below.

El Cabron will be released on 28th March 2025. Presave 'El Cabron' here and presave the album here. The single is released on 15th November.