February 24th, 2010
Words cannot express how excited I am that TOS has been invited to play the Surburban Home Records & Friends South by Southwest showcase show in Austin this year. I have been the biggest fan of their family of bands for quite sometime. I first got into Drag the River years ago and they set the bar as high as a rock band with alt-country leanings can go for me. I was lucky enough to catch Two Cow Garage in action when they came through Murfreesboro in 2008 supporting “Speaking In Cursive”, which is my favorite album of theirs to date. I remember watching their movie “The Long Way Around” on a portable DVD player when I was keeping watch over our fireworks tent in Le Verge last year. Amazing story.
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Austin Lucas is also an incredible talent. I still find myself baffled by the technical prowess of his guitar playing on “Somebody Loves You” and the songs are rich with excellent characters. There’s a plenty to be admired on that album, I highly suggest checking it out.
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Also - Glossary’s new album “Feral Fire” just came out this month. I’ve had it for the better part of the last year and I can tell you, it’s incredible. It’s gonna stand the test of time like all of Joey and the gang’s work.
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The showcase is a joint venture with Front Porch Musings. The folks over at FPM have been more than kind to us over the last past year and we are so appreciative that they asked us to play. FPM is new(ish) website but they post more than 99% of the blogs out there. They bust their asses keepin’ up. Subscribe to them!
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Here are some details about our new album, “American Stranger”:
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A few months ago the band relocated to Rockvale, Tennessee. A tiny, rural town just west of Murfreesboro. We moved into the pastoral house of the local Cumberland Presbyterian Church and went to work completing our 3rd album. Merritt’s mother is the preacher over there and it works out great because we have more than 150 acres to shoot guns, build fires and play music as loud as we want. Over a hundred of the acres have been in the Merritt family for generations and it’s so rocky you can’t put a house on it. That pretty much leaves it to us to horse around on. Pretty sweet. There’s two churches on the property, one being built back in the early 1900’s. It’s in that church we plan on setting up a studio and recording our new album. Back at the helm will be our partner in crime Mikey Allred and the producing duties falling on the shoulders of our good friend Joey Kneiser of Glossary. If it all goes down we should have it wrapped up and completed by May - then we will see where to go from there.
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Tentative track listing:
Hurt Someone
Cutting Corners
Warning You
Standing Water
Put Up a Fight
Just My Luck
Written Word
The Devil Does
Gone Down Swinging
Temptation
What Good
Beautiful Nobody
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While our ‘08 LP Young Lungs and our 09′ album Steel Hearts were really two sides of the same coin, American Stranger has turned out to be a far different beast. I lost my job selling tractors last June and between bouncing around between odd jobs, unemployment checks and 85 shows last year - these songs boiled their way to the top. I’m so pleased with how they’ve turned out. We’ve also bulked up our sound with the addition of Nick Naioti from Zombie Bazooka Patrol on keys and vocals and Brandon Harris of the Avery Set/Paper Navy on guitar. Oh, and I’m sellin’ tractors again…but for the competition (ol’ John Deere).
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To conclude this long-winded update here a couple of recent reviews of Steel Hearts:.
antiMUSIC.com
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In My Basement Room
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See you soon!
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-Kent