“Should you ever need a thing, it won’t be hard to find me.” – Turnpike Troubadours

A happy Labor Day weekend to you!

This non-80’s song has been spinning loops in my mind at various times since it was released in early August. My wife can attest. So, on this weekend, let me pay tribute to the workers of The Turnpike Troubadours’ construction company, who have bore an invisible musical pipeline directly to my frontal lobes, turned it on, and have refused to shut it down.

You need no introduction to this group if your tastes lie anywhere near the country-folk-bluegrass-cajun-Red Dirt rock-Americana arenas of music. I realize that’s a lot of arenas, but the Turnpike Troubadours cover a lot of ground and shift seamlessly like a salamander. Something tells me if they decided to play hair metal covers from the 80’s they would still be great (probably a little twangy, but great nonetheless), and it starts with the head troubadour, Evan Felker.

To define “troubadour” is to label 1) one of a class of lyric poets and poet-musicians often of knightly rank who flourished from the 11th to the end of the 13th century chiefly in the south of France and whose major theme was courtly love. But also, 2) a singer, especially of folk songs.

Hailing from the small community of Wright City in southeastern Oklahoma (no known affiliation with southern France), the 39 year-old lyrical poet and musician, Evan Felker, and bassist R.C. Edwards started the band a few years before their debut album in 2007. They played the bars and clubs in and around Stillwater and claim Tahlequah, Oklahoma as their place of origin.

I know both Stillwater and Tahlequah, because I lived for five years in Stillwater as a small boy, and then later Tahlequah where I spent two years attending Northeastern State University. I played basketball for the “mighty mighty” NSU Redmen (now “Riverhawks”) and legendary coach Coach Ken Hayes. I floated the Illinois River. I spent time at Granny’s Attic on Muskogee Avenue. I lived in Haskell Hall helping to sling-shot water balloons out the window at unsuspecting students walking to and from class. I traversed the scenic campus on a daily basis and I attended parties at mobile homes in the Cherokee county countryside where friends and classmates lived.

I was late to the Troubadours game so to speak. It was a former co-worker of mine (shoutout Sheldon) who introduced me to them several years ago shortly before they went on “indefinite hiatus.” Rumors abounded from everyone who didn’t know anything, but needless to say, the band was in demand of an overdue break in the action. Many of the members worked side projects, one went back to school, and the introverted Felker worked on himself. Jaded from years of the music business, a failed marriage, and an abuser of alcohol, Felker worked a friend’s ranch in Texas, sobered up, remarried his wife, Staci, and welcomed two children into the world.

“He’s (Felker) like Hemingway-meets-McCartney,” said Shooter Jennings, who helped produce the new album, “A Cat in the Rain,” at the fabled F.A.M.E. Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. An interesting combination of characters indeed for the lead singer of a band many didn’t think would ever play again. This is the sixth studio album and first since their 2017 album “A Long Way From Your Heart.”

“Standing at the ready with a dance or two still left in me. Wager that it won’t appear that I’ve forgot who brought me.”

If you were like me several years ago, and are not familiar with this group, but appreciate catchy hooks and musical artistry woven into a fabric of symbolic lyricism and vivid imagery then I’d encourage you to lend an ear and give them a chance.

From the opening line of the album’s opening song “Mean Old Sun,” where Felker proclaims “Empty promises I’ve given, hollow heart beats in my chest” to this post’s featured song, the album tackles many of mankind’s common themes penned and painted with a southern backdrop as only Felker can do.

The song today is the very melodic “Brought Me.” So if you share this life with someone you love, someone who has been through the highs and lows, someone who takes the worst of you, extends forgiveness, and makes you better, then let this song serve as a reminder of those times, a redemption of sorts, the hope for a better tomorrow, and a thankfulness for the here and now.

A very happy birthday to that person in my life. That person I love, my wife Rebekah.

I still have a lot of dances still left in me!

Here is “Brought Me” by the Turnpike Troubadours (named after those toll roads that took Felker and company from the southeastern part of Oklahoma to “civilization”)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yeuy3-d9kFQ%3Fsi%3DtPU9HoT9Y-N1kOep

A live version from a performance in August at The Ryman in Nashville…

https://youtube.com/watch?v=TXVv4ARFvSs%3Fsi%3DBWO5LDXtq4h-kUQc

Thanks for reading.

sincerely,

the80s