The Drive-By Truckers have released of their second album of 2020, THE NEW OK. Watch their official music video for their cover of The Ramones’ classic “The KKK Took My Baby Away,” featuring vocals by bassist Matt Patton above.
THE NEW OK is the band’s 13th studio album, arriving just months after the release of THE UNRAVELING, also available now via ATO Records. Originally conceived as a quarantine EP collecting material recorded in Memphis during sessions for THE UNRAVELING, the project quickly grew to include provocative new songs written and recorded over what Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson HoodHood calls “this endless summer of protests, riots, political shenanigans, and pandemic horrors.” Tracks such as Hood’s “Watching The Orange Clouds” – inspired by the protests that followed George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police – were exchanged between Hood, co-founding singer/songwriter/guitarist Mike Cooley, 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,” says Hood. “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!” The new album will also be available on red vinyl.
TRACKLIST:
The New Ok
Tough To Let Go
The Unraveling
The Perilous Night
Sarah’s Flame
Sea Island Lonely
The Distance
Watching The Orange Clouds
The KKK Took My Baby Away
