Renewed Turnpike Troubadours Drop New Video, Announce Album

Turnpike Troubadours (photo by David McClister)
In conjunction with this week’s news of a new album coming from Turnpike Troubadours, the band released a video for the album’s first song today.
“Mean Old Sun” is fans’ first glimpse into A Cat in the Rain, coming Aug. 25 via Bossier City Records/Thirty Tigers. The album, first reported via an in-depth article on the band’s comeback in Rolling Stone, was produced by Shooter Jennings and recorded in part at Muscle Shoals’ Fame Recording Studios. The video for “Mean Old Sun,” directed by Reservation Dogs‘ Sterlin Harjo, was filmed in part at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Oklahoma-based Turnpike Troubadours went on hiatus in 2019 but continued to gain new fans, and they have returned to touring over the past year. There are some big dates ahead as well, including two nights at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and a set at the Newport Folk Festival. (Find the full list of headline tour and festival dates here.) Last fall, they were inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame.
The band is fully reunited, with Evan Felker on vocals and guitar, Kyle Nix on fiddle, Ryan Engleman on electric guitar, RC Edwards on bass, Gabe Pearson on drums, and Hank Early on pedal steel and accordion.
The Rolling Stone profile dispels the prevailing theory that the band had pressed pause in 2019 so Felker could get sober, though he did, eventually. Rather, it says, their touring over the past year, and the recording of Cat in the Rain, “was a comeback from being so jaded to every aspect of music that Felker never wanted to be around it again.” He started not showing up for concerts, and eventually something had to change. As the article explains, Felker did.
A Cat in the Rain will be Turnpike Troubadours’ sixth studio album since the band formed in 2005. Their 2017 album, A Long Way From Your Heart, hit No 3 on Billboard’s Top country Albums chart and No. 20 on the all-genre Billboard 200.
Here’s the full track list for A Cat in the Rain:
1. Mean Old Sun
2. Brought Me
3. Lucille
4. Chipping Mill
5. The Rut
6. A Cat in the Rain
7. Black Sky
8. Easy Side Love Song (Bottoms Up)
9. Three More Days
10. Won’t You Give Me One More Chance