Premiere: Ally Venable has a Heart Of Fire

"On the Road to Nowhere" with Devon Allman

Covid-19 hasn’t silenced Texas’s favorite new gunslinger, Ally Venable. Venable’s idea of “spreading a positive message of the love,” as she describes her latest release, is to round up her friends and rattle your speakers with songs that proclaim “better times ahead.”

Still in her 20s, the guitarist’s path carreened through childhood church choirs, teenage influences of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Miranda Lambert, early releases earning Top 10 chart placings and ETX Awards, onward to 2019’s #2 Billboard-charting Texas Honey. Venable’s upward trajectory continued with house-rocking sets on the Blues Caravan tour.

Not one to let a global pandemic derail her momentum, Venable worked on Heart Of Fire with producer Jim Gaines at the Bessie Blue Studio in Stantonville, TN, laser-focused on her songcraft. The rip-it-up guitarist brought in friends like Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Devon Allman to help—well—rip it up.

Devon Allman, Ally Venable
Photo: Braedon Stubbs

This old-soul gunslinger gets loud, and as Texas roots icon and Texas Honey producer Mike Zito pointed out: “Ally is the future of blues and the crossover music of American roots-rock.”Which is not to say Venable rides a straight line through the blues. She’ll change pace to keep herself and her audience on their toes, as on her cover of Bill Withers’ classic “Use Me,” reborn with congas, rubberband bass and a grooving lick, and the impossibly wistful “Road To Nowhere, with Southern rock’s chosen son Devon Allman dovetailing with Venable on the chorus harmonies.

Venable told Elmore, “Devon jumped right into the song, elevated it and brought it to life. I’m so happy with how it turned out. I’ve learned so much working with him, and I can’t wait for everyone to hear this tune for the first time.”