Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel is commemorating its 50th year with a new, three-song EP, Better Times. Bandleader and founding member Ray Benson takes the lead vocal on the title track, a hopeful original written while riding out the pandemic featuring Katie Shore on fiddle and vocals as well as Ginny Mac on accordion. Katie Shore sings “All I’m Asking,” a rousing request to get back together, written by Band of Heathens’ Ed Jurdi and Gordy Quist. Meanwhile, Benson and Shore harmonize on

Ray Benson, leader of the Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel, stepped away from his usual emphasis on Texas dancehall rhythms on the poignant “Sundown,” a song so new that Benson had to refer to a lyric sheet during his Songwriter Session at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on October 6. The song came to Benson after his recovery from the coronavirus, which the sixty-nine-year-old bandleader contracted last March. Benson fully recovered from the illness after battling extreme fatigu