Where’s Brant Croucher? You might wonder, if you’d heard his sweetly sad Blanco County Lights record in 2014, which one critic called a “testimony to high-caliber songwriting.” The Cypress native, 36, has been under the radar since then; he married his sometime duet partner Lainey Balagia in 2015, and they had baby Amelia in 2016. “She’s been our project for the last year.” But Croucher — who pens country-tinged, densely poetic songs as “a profoundly unique way to tell a story” — is raring to get back at it.  He’s writing a new solo record, and is set to open for Joe Ely at Discovery Green May 11.

Croucher actually resisted the music man’s life at first, spending his first five years out of business school working in healthcare before accepting his calling. “I tried to not to do it for a long time,” he says. “But the stage feels like somewhere I’m supposed to be.” He wears the denim trucker jacket, $128, by Levi’s at Stag Provisions.

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