Album releases become available for download Fridays at midnight East Coast Time. Since that's 9pm Thursday night West Coast Time, every Thursday night, Pepper picks her two favorite songs from the new country albums and plays them on K-Frog for New at Nine! Here are her picks for this week.
As Midland drops their sophomore album, Let It Roll, they're also looking back at their debut album, and noting the similarities and diffferences.
"From On the Rocks, we've all three, as individuals, have grown," explains lead singer Mark Wystrach. "As musicians and songwriters, we've grown, which comes from living, which comes from practicing, which comes from playing and experiencing. And that's what Let It Roll is to us, I think, it's a continuation but it's an evolution, and I think that's what you're seeing in the songs."
"We love music history, and not just in country music, you know, rock and roll and blues and jazz and old American Songbook stuff," adds Jess Cason, considering their traditional sound. "We just kind of listen to everything and we listen to what we think is the best music ever made. You know, a lot of the music that we think is the best music ever made happens to come from a certain time period. And we do listen to modern music as well. We're not pretending that it's a certain time period and you're just ignoring everything else. We listen to modern music we try to keep in touch with what's going on. And we live in 2019, so if we write a song it may be influenced by whatever we're listening to, but it's got to have us in it, you know, it's got to be personal to us and it's got to be from the heart. So it's never just going to be a rehashing of an old song or an old thing."
Here are the songs I played from Let It Roll for New at Nine tonight:
1. Mr. Lonely
2. 21st Century American Honky Tonk Band
