It hasn’t really been that long since hometown hero Orion Walsh last dropped some new music on his home city of Lincoln, Neb. His last EP, “Freedom Lost, Freedom Found,” came out last summer, and it had been just more than a year or so before that his first solo album, “Tornado Lullabies,” dropped.

I’m just saying, I’m not complaining.

Now, Walsh has a new full-length album out titled “The Hitchhiker’s Son,” and it’s chock-full of everything Lincoln has come to love about Walsh.

“The Hitchhiker’s Son” is an album about Walsh himself, as his father was a hitchhiker. Yet the album still has a lot of the usual themes of Walsh’s music: the road, working hard but staying broke, police and problems.

Walsh’s music has never been particularly complex or intricate, and this has always been one of the best things about his songs. “The Hitchhiker’s Son” is awash with simple, powerful, straightforward folk songs right out of the American heartland.

Walsh’s lyrics continue to be his strong suit on “The Hitchhiker’s Son.” While he and his band play driving folk tunes, he belts out songs about how he’s tired but hopeful of the way the world is going, or about how long and lonely the highway can be, but still worth it. Every message rings clear in Walsh’s trembling tenor voice. He can sound angry and powerful when he wants, or soft and gentle. He has range, and he uses it.

As far as local releases go, this is about as good an album as one could hope for. The recording is top-notch, engineered mostly by A.J. Mogis of Saddle Creek fame, and recorded mostly right here in Lincoln. It’s always good to hear quality work coming out of the heart of the city that spawns the music.

Walsh put a lot into this album, and hopefully doesn’t plan to quit any time soon. If anything negative can be said about “The Hitchhiker’s Son,” it’s that the actually folkiness of it sounds like a lot of music I’ve heard before, but I’m not complaining. As long as Walsh is behind his guitar behind a microphone, I’ll keep listening to it. Walsh’s stories come from the road. And as long as he stays on the road, he’ll keep singing his stories. I can’t wait.