Photo credit: Jason Thrasher
Drive-By Truckers have announced the release of their second album of 2020. The band’s new full-length second LP of 2020, THE NEW OK arrives via ATO Records at all DSPs and streaming services on Friday, October 2; CD and red vinyl arrive on Friday, December 18. THE NEW OK is preceded by today’s premiere of the powerful new title track, “The New Ok,” available for streaming and download now.
Drive-By Truckers’ 13th studio album, THE NEW OK arrives mere months after the release of the band’s highly acclaimed THE UNRAVELING. Originally conceived as a quarantine EP collecting material recorded in Memphis during sessions for THE UNRAVELING — including a fiery cover of The Ramones’ classic “The KKK Took My Baby Away” (vocals by bassist Matt Patton) — the project quickly grew to include provocative new songs written and recorded over what Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood calls “this endless summer of protests, riots, political shenanigans and pandemic horrors.” Tracks such as Hood’s “The New Ok” and “Watching The Orange Clouds” – inspired by the protests which followed George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police – were exchanged between Hood, co-founding singer/songwriter/guitarist Mike Cooley, bassist Patton, keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzalez, and drummer Brad Morgan and then mixed by longtime DBT producer David Barbe. The result, says Hood, is “a full album that hopefully balances out the darkness of our current situation with a hope for better days and nights ahead.”
“To call these past few months trying would be a dramatic understatement,” Hood continues. “Our lives are intertwined with our work in ways that give us our best songs and performances. It is a life that has often rewarded us beyond our wildest dreams. Speaking for myself, I don’t have hobbies, I have this thing I do. To be sidelined with a brand new album and have to sit idly while so much that I love and hold dear falls apart before my very eyes has been intense, heartbreaking, anger provoking and very depressing. It has gone to the very heart of our livelihoods and threatened near everything that we have spent our lives trying to build. Here’s to the hope that we can make 2021 a better year than this one has been. In the meantime, here’s to THE NEW OK!”
Released January 31, 2020, THE UNRAVELING marked Drive-By Truckers’ first new LP in more than three years – the longest ever gap between new DBT albums. The album – recorded September 2018 at the legendary Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, TN by GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Margo Price) and David Barbe – made a top 5 debut on Billboard’s “Rock Albums” chart amidst a wave of critical acclaim from the likes of American Songwriter, which hailed it as the band’s “best yet…a perfect storm of anger, resentment, frustration and even glimmers of hope, wrapped in the sharp, terse musical invention we have come to expect from these veterans.” Rolling Stone declared THE UNRAVELING to be “another sturdy addition to the band’s almost peerless discography,” noting, “Unfiltered fury suits the Truckers well.” Songs like “Armageddon’s Back in Town” and “Slow Ride Argument” “describe what it’s like to feel like a fugitive in your own town, your own country,” wrote the Chicago Tribune‘s Greg Kot. “In the world painted by the Drive By Truckers, their narrators are all running from something: their family, the law, perhaps even themselves. It’s no way to live, but these songs give their struggle meaning.”
Hood, DBT co-founder Mike Cooley, and guitarist/keyboardist Jay Gonzalez will all be performing solo shows on NoonChorus.com through the end of the year and beyond at 6p PT/9p ET. The performances will be available for 72 hours after each live broadcast. The scheduled dates are below:
September 30 – Patterson Hood
October 7 – Mike Cooley
October 14 – Patterson Hood
October 21 – Mike Cooley
October 24 – Jay Gonzalez
October 28 – Patterson Hood
November 7 – Jay Gonzalez
November 11 – Mike Cooley
November 18 – Patterson Hood
November 25 – Thanksgiving Filter – DBT Variety Show (featuring all 5 members)
Tickets available here:
noonchorus.com/pattersondbt
noonchorus.com/cooleydbt
noonchorus.com/jay-gonzalez
