Alone

The Zoo Crew has got "Alone" turning on the platter right now, and if you are out there on the highway with the windows cracked, this one sits real nice between the white line and the horizon. Paul Val and Gary Clark Jr. cut it as a single, released June 12, 2026, on a little independent imprint called God's Will, with Clark appearing courtesy of Warner Brothers Records. It runs just under five minutes, and it does not hurry. Paul Val Hernandez wrote it, sang it, and played acoustic guitar on it. Gary Clark Jr. came in on electric guitar and vocals. Omar Vallejo produced and played electric bass, Duke Decter co-produced, JJ Johnson sat on the drums, Victor Vallejo stacked the background vocals, and Matt Hubbard laid down the keys and piano. That is a room full of Austin hands, not a committee.

When Paul Val dropped the record on his own page, the note was short and straight: "ALONE - Paul Val & Gary Clark Jr out now! Old Austin tradition with a fresh sound." That is the whole story in one breath. His site still carries the same flag out front, "alone ft Gary Clark Jr out now," right under the Texas Blues Rock N' Soul banner. A couple weeks after the single landed, he took the song on the road to the Benicassim Blues Festival in Spain and slid it into the set right after "Every Night In Texas." Same tune, different dirt. The lyric video and the studio cut both credit the same circle of players, so what you are hearing is not a remix built in a back office. It is the song they meant to make.

Listen close to the words and you can hear a man talking himself through a doorway. "I feel alone, I feel alone." Then he asks for a reason, a million ways to stay, and tells her that if she has got that reason she has got to make him stay. The next turn is the one that catches the old heads in the Zoo Freaks: "If I leave here tomorrow." You have heard that shape of a line before, riding shotgun with Skynyrd on a long night, but here it bends toward something quieter. He sings about accepting the things he cannot change, then admits that if he leaves it all tomorrow he knows he would feel alone. It is not a boast and it is not a sob story. It is a man standing in the parking lot after the gig, keys in his hand, deciding whether the road or the room is the lonelier place. That Serenity Prayer echo in the middle is the kind of line a biker understands without a sermon attached. Change what you can. Live with the rest. Do not lie to yourself about which is which.

The Austin handshake on this record is the part worth telling twice. Gary Clark Jr. did not need another credit. He has already got the Grammys, the big rooms, and a Warner deal that started back when his mother was still booking him off the kitchen table. Showing up on a younger cat's single, courtesy of the label, is the old club way of doing business. You hear somebody coming up through the same rooms you came up through, and you lend the guitar. Paul Val has been calling that sound an old Austin tradition with a fresh coat, and the credits back him up. Clark on guitar and voice, Val on the song and the acoustic, a local rhythm section that already knows how the Continental Club breathes. No guest verse parachuted in from another city. Just two Texas guitar players in the same weather.

Paul Val Hernandez did not start in a blues joint. He started in Riverside, California, out in the desert, and the first live music that knocked him sideways was not a shuffle. He has told it himself: his first concert was Gore, and he was five years old when they ran him through that fake meat shredder they used to wheel out on stage. The room was moshing, mean, and loud, and he loved it. From there it was the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, Black Flag, the whole punk shelf. He has been playing since he was nine. Around fifteen the blues got hold of him and he never went back. The funny part, the part he likes to tell, is that he was already dressing like Texas and already hungry for Texas music while he was still stuck in Riverside, trying to put a band together with kids who did not want any of it. He got tired of explaining himself, said the heck with it, and moved to Austin.

First door he walked through on the East Side was the Skylark Lounge. That is where he met Soul Man Sam, the man who had been holding down that room and later the Monday nights at Antone's. Sam let him sit in, then put him on stages he would have needed years to reach on his own. Val has said it plain: without that, it would have taken longer. He started on Fender Strats, decided they were not quite his voice, moved over to a Gibson Les Paul, and kept chasing the sound until it matched the picture in his head. The rest has been residencies and miles. Saturday nights at King Bee on the East Side, live records cut at the Continental Club, nights at C-Boy's Heart & Soul, a turn at Antone's, and those European runs where he hauls the same songs into rooms that have never seen the Colorado River. He still talks like an independent. On his own site he thanks the people who show up, stream the record, buy a shirt, or pass the name along, and he signs off the way a road dog would: he'll play the blues if he wants to.

Gary Clark Jr. came up on the other side of the same town, a generation ahead and already a landmark by the time Val hit the Skylark. Born February 15, 1984, in Austin, he told Questlove he grew up on the south side, in a little spot called Oak Hill. The house had guitars in it. He has said the moment that lit him up was seeing Michael Jackson on the Bad tour when he was five. The first guitar of his own was a Christmas Ibanez RX20 when he was about thirteen. No fancy teacher. He checked how-to books out of the Covington Middle School library and wore out records by Green Day, Nirvana, Jimmy Reed, and Stevie Ray Vaughan until the fingers agreed with the ears. Small gigs followed, and then Clifford Antone, the man who built Antone's into the room where the Vaughan brothers had already redrawn the blues, put the kid on stage. Jimmie Vaughan and the rest of that circle took an interest. Years later Clark would say the blues is still the foundation, even after the hip-hop colors and the big-band nights and the four Grammy wins that came with "This Land" and the earlier work. Hearing him lean into "Alone" with a younger Austin writer is just the circle doing what the circle does.

So if you are a Zoo Freak hearing this one for the first time, file it under the good kind of lonely. Not the city kind. The two-lane kind, where the song knows you might leave tomorrow and also knows you would miss the room if you did. Paul Val brought the song and the miles. Gary Clark Jr. brought the guitar and the blessing of the hometown elder. The Crew will leave it up a little longer so you can catch the turnaround. When you want the rest of the freeform ride, the deep cuts, and the stories between the songs, the station is waiting over at THE ZOO.

Paul Val keeps the home fire at his official site, paulval.com, which is still flying the flag for this single right on the front page. He posts the road news and the new music on Facebook and on Instagram, and that Instagram post from release day is the one that called the record an old Austin tradition with a fresh sound. We could not turn up an official X account for him that actually belongs to the band, so we are not going to hand you a stranger's page. Gary Clark Jr.'s official site is garyclarkjr.com, and the man keeps the same name across Facebook, Instagram, and X. If you want a room full of folks already arguing about set lists and posters, the public Gary Clark Jr. Fans group is the lively one. Roll through those pages, then come back to the dial. The Crew will still be here, spinning the long ones for the Freaks.