Traditional Country (#510) on the Country DDS.
If you’re a fan of the sensible but traditional country songs of guys like Cody Johnson and Randall King, Wynn Williams released the album in 2025 that should’ve been on your radar, by maybe wasn’t. It’s called Country Therapy, and there’s perhaps not a better way to describe how country music can cure whatever ails you often better than whatever drug cocktail or therapy sessions come recommended by your HMO.
Similar to many of the traditionalists within country music’s ranks, the Wynn Williams story starts in the rodeo. Originally from Weatherford just west of Fort Worth, TX, he was a steer wrestler in his younger days. But as most anyone in the rodeo will tell you, that’s a young man’s game. So after graduating from Texas A&M in 2016, Wynn took his lifetime love for performers like George Strait and Brooks & Dunn, and launched a traditional country music career.
Deciding to become a traditional country artist might not take the same kind of muscle as rustling steers. But it takes perhaps even more courage, especially in the late 2010s when Williams hatched the idea. In 2020, Wynn Williams released a self-titled album, and saw the opening song “Tornado” take off. His 2023 EP Your Love had another hit in “Like She Does” with Kylie Frey.
Now with a strong regional following in Texas and surrounding areas, Wynn Williams recorded and released an album that deserves to have a national impact. Country Therapy takes little or no warming up to. From the opening title track on, it immediately endears itself with ample fiddle and steel guitar, but not in a way that would turn off the pop country audience. It’s an album everyone on the family trip or carpool can find agreeable.
That agreeable nature extends to the songwriting as well, optimizing universal favorability. Writing or co-writing multiple songs including one of the album’s standout tracks in “The Same,” Williams also co-wrote or raided the catalogs of folks like Brice Long, Jeff Hyde, Rhett Atkins, Carson Chamberlain, Keith Stegall, and Dean Dillon to find the best songs for the album. The album also includes a rendition of “Diamonds Make Babies” co-written by Chris Stapleton, and original recorded by Dierks Bentley.
What Country Therapy might lack is the grit and heartache you’re used to in a lot of traditional country music. Wynn Williams loves to sing about his wife, and songs like “A Woman Can Do That to a Man,” “Hear You Say It,” and “She Ain’t You” gives the album a somewhat soft, subservient feel that might be what women love to hear, but makes boyfriends and husbands roll their eyes. But you also feel like these songs come straight from Wynn’s heart and real life experience, even when written by others.
Williams helps round it all out though with the final song on the album. If George Strait could record the rowdy and ribald Wayne Kemp and Mack Vickery-written “The Fireman,” then so can Wynn Williams. This assures you that Williams is willing to unbutton his top collar at times. But it also speaks to how Wynn could maybe use a bit more originality and depth in his songs to take his music to the next level.
What Wynn Williams and Country Therapy have right is the chemistry to make country music that immediately warms you to the virtues of the genre, and proves you don’t need machine beats, fluffy choruses, or bubble gum lyrics to make country music that’s easily enjoyable. The Deluxe Edition of the album released in December also includes a duet with Randall King on “Here for the Beer.”
7.8/10
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