After last years Down River Revival, it’s not too big a surprise that the folks behind Chicago’s Numero Group have again reached back into a studio’s archives to unloose another installment in the Local Customs series. The second disc, Lone Star Lowlands, works to compile the top crop of recordings coming out of Mickey Rouse’s studio down there in Beaumont, Texas. And anyone with even a passing knowledge of music from Texas during the sixties and seventies should be pretty jazzed up this compilation.

As with other studio round ups, Lone Star Lowlands doesn’t possess a genre-specific track listing. Instead, the selections culled from Rouse’s archive move between hard rock and revved up blues to pseudo psychedelia and full band singer songwriter jaunts. The album’s two discs provide ample space to lend listeners proper insight into a scene as diverse as it remains unknown.

A few of the efforts here are going to be a bit fey for listeners more acquainted with the tripped out sounds of Austin’s mid decade music scene. Mother Lion’s “Simple House” isn’t a throw away, and its harmonica break is relatively pleasant even while the rest of the track is all AM radio silliness. Of course, a few tracks on, the band completely redeems itself with an instrumental titled “I’m the Fool.”

“Tomorrow,” turned in by a group called Hope, sits somewhere between pop and nascent hard rock stuff. It’s a rather representative effort of music not just from this imprint, but the seemingly open minded music scene flourishing in Texas at the time. It’s no Doug Sahm, but there’s still a feeling of expansiveness in the group’s influence. And while it might have less to do with sounds emanating from south of the boarder, a jazzy feel pervades the song’s instrumental sections.

Who knows how many different groups have recorded under the name D.O.A.? Whatever the answer is, the group included here lays down “Lady Tell Me Why,” a sort of schizoid track that’s incapable of figuring if it’s a ballad or a slightly fried rock track. But the combination works and the instrumental passages make good use warm guitar tones – it actually sounds similar to those reissued Rodriguez discs, if he’d had a bigger band, not just a few Funk Brothers behind him.

Disregarding any critical point of view relating to the work here, there’s probably a few tracks included that going to please whoever picks up the disc. If nothing else, look at Lone Star Lowlands as an investment in your music education.