Paul Cauthen

Paul Cauthen keeps the fires of old-fashioned outlaw country burning, spiking his sinewy swagger with an undercurrent of gospel balanced by a hefty dose of midnight sleaze. Nicknamed "Big Velvet" due to his smooth baritone, Cauthen may have been resolutely secular, but he telegraphed those spiritual connections in the very title of his 2016 breakthrough, My Gospel, not to mention the testifying implied by the name of its 2018 successor, Have Mercy. Unlike such peers as Sturgill Simpson, Cauthen didn't bend his country toward psychedelic rock, nor was he a savvy Nashville opera...