This record was written and recorded over a period of global confusion, where we were all tested in ways we never expected. Out of that fragile soil, me and the Neighbors found something very special, and this record is the fruit of that creative gardening that we did together.
Over the course of a couple years, one Monday a month the band would come over to my writing studio and listen to the songs I had written that month. Some I wrote alone, others I wrote with dear and trusted friends. People like Natalie Hemby, Ketch Secor, KS Rhodes, Dave Barnes and others… The band would listen to those songs and play along, challenging my assumptions and arrangements, and helping shape a record. Then we went to Echo Mountain Studios in the mountains of North Carolina with our incredibly talented friends, Producer Cason Cooley and Engineer Buckley Miller, to camp out and record over 25 songs in 10 days.
Listen to the Song Drew Holcomb – Openstage (os.fan)
The Neighbors and I have been playing together for many years now, and I am beyond lucky to have found them, with their deep well of talent and skill, but also their delicate and confident capacity for working friendships. They are my people, and making this record will always be one of the most memorable experiences of my life. See, we aren’t chasing anymore…we know who we are, and we know who we are not, and in that we have found complete creative freedom. The expressions between the 5 of us, whether onstage or in the studio, has started to feel almost like a 6th sense.
We ended up choosing this group of songs because they felt like a complete musical expression of that mutual joy. We pulled from all the wells of our musical loves and make a record with a breadth of genre influence, from the epic “On A Roll” to the riotous “All the Money in the World,” to the pensive longing of “Fly,” the lament of “Troubles,” and the defiant barroom carol of “Find Your People.”
I hope this record makes you want to sing, makes you want to dance, makes you want to cry and laugh, maybe even in the same breath. More than anything, I hope it makes you grateful to alive.
