Texans are fond of several adages. One, a perennial favorite, goes like this: “If you don’t like the weather, just wait awhile. It’ll change.”

            The same adage could easily apply to Texas music. The singer you hear delivering a Patsy Cline country tune might well turn around and belt out the blues. The guitar player able to roar through hot rock ‘n’ roll licks is liable to, five minutes later, serve up the kind of big, fat chords that would make T-Bone Walker grin.

            Michael O’Connor is the sort of Texas musician who can, and will, change musical gears as quickly as Texas weather changes from driving rain to bright sunshine.

            From the Texas Hill Country by way of the Texas Gulf Coast, O’Connor is a guitar player, a singer, a songwriter, a bandleader and a first-call sideman. There’s nothing calculated about that, nothing confused, nothing confusing. That’s just the way the man is.

            On a bandstand working for someone else, O’Connor is a player who is hard to fool. Whether he’s asked to take electric lead on a 12-bar blues song or use his acoustic guitar to punctuate a complex, who-knows-what-form narrative tune, O’Connor puts his guitar notes exactly where they belong.

            Part of O’Connor’s range comes from being a musician since he was a kid. Part comes from the simple fact he’s just that good.

            For his debut album as a leader, it was natural for O’Connor to open and record a bag of varied tunes - 10 of his own and one penned by the king of blues writers, Willie Dixon. It was just as natural for O’Connor to play acoustic, electric and resonator guitars, mandolin and harmonica.

            Itchy listeners looking for a convenient pigeonhole in which to file O’Connor’s music are going to have a problem. Those who exercise a bit of patience will be rewarded with the most soulful sort of variety.

            “Green and Blue” opens and closes with turbocharged folk songs. In between are rocking Southern-fried blues (“That Ain’t right”), ballads punctuated by O’Connor’s acoustic guitar and Eamon McLoughlin’s fiddle (A Hundred and Four Degrees,” “Green and Blue”), fat-chord jump blues (the instrumental “Ranch Road 12”), straight-up blues with a Texas twist (Dixon’s “Same Thing”), country blues (“West Memphis Blues”) and even an ode to a boxer (“Ballad of Jack Sullivan”).

            With this album, O’Connor also proves he comes equipped with a large load of good sense. Produced by storied singing songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard (with whom O’Connor has played plenty of gigs) and recorded at the Fire Station Studios with Bobby Arnold twisting knobs, the album features a cadre of well-traveled players.

            Accompanied by bassist Glenn Fukunaga, percussionist Paul Pearcy, multi-instrumentalist Jeff Plankenhorn, fiddler Eamon McLoughlin, organist/vocalist Mike Cross, harmonica player/vocalist Rocky Benton and another noted singing songwriter, Terri Hendrix, O’Connor shows changeable music, like changeable weather, makes life more interesting.