Now and then, a young artist arrives with such confidence that you wonder where he or she has been hiding. In Robyn Ludwick’s case, it was in Bandera, where she learned to play, then in the anonymity of Austin’s open-mike scene, where she cut her teeth. Admittedly, she had a leg up over her peers from what she’d absorbed from her older brothers, Bruce and Charlie Robison. But Ludwick’s For So Long (self-released; available at robynludwick.com) sounds like neither of her siblings’ work. She slips into a comfortable, evocative country warble. And she’s an even better writer; despite the clumsy opener, songs like the title track, “El Dorado,” “I Am,” and “Virginia” leave you with haunting reverberations. “I would love to live my life a long time ago,” Ludwick sings, and she does seem inhabited by an old soul. Fortunately, she’s very much with us now.
