“Doghouse Flowers”
Monte Warden and the Wagoneers
Written by Brandi Warden and Monte Warden
The first radio single by Monte Warden and The Wagoneers in 37 years is everything a rockabilly song needs to be.
Written by Warden and his wife Brandi, “Doghouse Flowers” is inescapably energetic and full of a wild exuberance. The vocals are twitchy and stuttering, full of greasy yelps and rumbling growls. The recording is live off the floor – the entire band playing together in one room, the legendary Arlyn Studios in Austin no less. The performance is manic and spills reckless abandon. The upright bass slaps and the live recording literally echo the sound of Sam Phillips work at Sun Studios in Memphis in the 1950s. At just two minutes and eleven seconds of playing time, the song is shockingly short, but it punches with a great hook, a memorable line a co-worker or favourite uncle might say off the cuff in a casual conversation. The song is excellent evidence that Carl Perkins did not write all the good rockabilly songs already.
The question lingering in my mind after listening to this song, however, was does country music really need a rockabilly single from the Wagoneers in 2026?
Warden admits that just like The Flatlanders, an earlier mythic and iconic Texas band, The Wagoneers may be more a legend than a band themselves. More people outside of Texas have probably read about the Wagoneers than may have actually heard them. Warden was influenced by the television show Happy Days as a kid. He learned about Buddy Holly from the sitcom when Fonzi referenced the rockabilly pioneer, so Warden’s musical inclinations track and are life-long. Proof of that, is The Wagoneers’ standing gig at the iconic Austin, Texas honky-tonk and dance hall, The Broken Spoke, on the last Friday of every month for several years now. The Wagoneers proudly identify as pickers and a live band.
So, the band is no mere revivalist or retro act. Their love and adoration for this style of music is genuine. Monte Warden is in no way opportunistic or chasing trends here. At the end of every month, dance-hall feet follow his heart, his songs, and that voice. The Wagoneers will take that special energy to the Opry stage Saturday 18 April when they play the Mother Church of Country music for the first time as a band since 1988.
I think it’s fascinating that what stands to be a potential entry point into the seemingly increasingly distant past of country music, is a style that, in its day, posed an existential threat to the viability of the genre. Yet, rockabilly revivalists have always been a thing. Marty Stuart, Mark Collie, Stacy Dean Campbell, and Steve Kolander were contemporary iterations of the rockabilly aesthetic and sound in Nashville in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
The true gift of this single is its simplicity. It is short and intense. It is live and honest. Isn’t so much of what taints the ’90’s country revival a distrust of the sincerity of the intent? Affection can quickly be clouded by affectation. Even if the Wagoneers went the Morgan Wallen route and recorded a 30 song album of songs like “Doghouse Roses, “ it would be a quick listen comparatively and far more compelling.
Brevity counts for something in today’s Nashville. The deception of the Wagoneers is how simple they make their simple artistry sound. When the artists themselves were young twenty year-olds, their sound demonstrated a youthful reverence for the discovery of an older but vital style and sound. These many years later, they bring a respect for the wisdom and weight of the tradition they are still carrying forward to new generation of listeners. The conversation of how hillbilly music and R&B cross pollinated, culturally, musically, and politically, is still playing out in Nashville today.
Did Monte Warden and The Wagoneers need to record, release and promote “Doghouse Flowers” in 2026? Yes, they did.
As Warden himself would say this kind of song is where the “hooey” happens and “Ah, honey” this single is a blast.
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