This Band Saved My Music Soul

The Turnpike Troubadours

Can music save your mortal soul?

—Don McLean

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It cannot! But music is a beautiful thing. Last Friday, a Swap favorite, the Turnpike Troubadours, dropped a new album. This week, Mat texted the Swap thread asking if the group had listened yet. This conversation led to a story about how the Troubadours saved Kody’s music soul, which inspired this week’s Bonus Track and the theme for the entire edition. Enjoy some Troubadours song recs from Adam, Ben, and Mat, and be sure to check out the new album.

Adam’s Pick: The Housefire

Lord knows that I've been blessed, I can stand up to the test

I can live on so much less, this much I've been learning

Feel a pounding in my chest, I'm fearful I'll confess

How am I to get my rest? The house I built is burning

The songwriting done by Evan Felker here is vivid, to say the least. As soon as the first stanza is complete, you are transported outside of a home that’s currently on fire in the dead of winter. You’re safe, but you have a strange sense of contentment. You realize that the most important possessions you have are the people right there with you. I am not sure I have heard a song that shifts the perspective so well. In my current season of life, I feel deeply what is being said here. I feel blessed, fearful, and maybe that my house is figuratively on fire. I got to hear this one live last year, with a very dear friend, after not being a heavy listener. It was one of my favorites that night.

Ben’s Pick: Old Time Feeling (Like Before)

Felker slows it down in this song with a rhythmic acoustic and a crying pedal underneath. “Old Time Feeling” has an old-time country feel while it explores the ongoing longing for a former love. Both his personal (trouble all the way up to my neck) and professional (ain’t made the opry yet) story seem to be in view, which makes it easy to relate to the failure, regret, and hope. Good tune.

Mat’s Pick: Heaven Passing Through

I had no idea that the Troubadours had a new record out until Tuesday night. I learned about it from my (very talented musician) friend Ragan at a middle school band concert. In particular, he told me this song was one of the best examples of songwriting he’s ever heard. I’ve been listening to it a ton since then, and I agree. What a song! It’s such a good reminder of how quickly life passes. It’s a fitting reminder for someone who somehow now has two of his three kids in middle school. Hold onto the moment like it’s heaven passing through.

Bonus Track: The Turnpike Troubadours Saved My Music Soul

By Kody Gibson

Music has been a part of my life for a long time. My first album was Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette. I think I got it at Randy’s M&M (for my Edmond, OK guys—if you know, you know). I wore that thing out. Alanis’s rebel spirit created the perfect soundtrack for a mischievous kid who liked to ding-dong-ditch the loading dock at his neighborhood grocery store.

In middle school, my rebellious spirit added to it the values of my Christian faith. Key word, added. The rebellious spirit was still there, and remains today, albeit dialed down. So what music could capture a kid who was trying to follow Jesus but still wanted to break some rules? Christian ska. That’s right—the brass-blasting, reggae-influenced companion of punk rock. And Christian at that. Enter the OC Supertones, Five Iron Frenzy, and the Insyderz. These short-lived legends gave me a song to sing and a dance to dance.

True story: ska concerts featured a dance component called skanking—a toned-down version of punk rock’s mosh pit. While the other kids at school were listening to pop music on KJ103 at whatever parties they’d throw, I was down at the United Methodist Church, skanking to the beat with the Supertones. Music shaped my middle school soul.

When ska died (remember, it was short-lived), the next logical step was emo. What better companion for the angsty years of adolescence? Emo was more complex than ska but shared one of ska’s essential traits: it wasn’t mainstream. Still, I’m not sure why my friends and I were initially drawn to emo. We didn’t have tumultuous breakups because we never had girlfriends. We didn’t wear black. Most of us liked sports. But emo gave us something to scream during late-night drives en route to throw toilet paper all over someone else's yard. Jimmy Eat World, Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, Coheed and Cambria, and Saves the Day were our soundtrack. We were different, but not weird, and emo was the anthem of our gatherings.

But like most in the emo movement, we grew up. I went to college. I got married. Went to grad school. Took on more responsibilities and fewer playlists. At some point, the exploration stopped.

The music soul went quiet and almost died.

The evidence? In grad school, all I listened to in the car was sports talk radio and, wait for it, Top 40 radio stations. There’s nothing wrong with pop—at The Music Swap, we’re proudly anti-snobbery. I highlighted a Lady Gaga song a few weeks ago. But a steady diet of Ke$ha and Colin Cowherd will rot your creative senses. Mine were withering. I wasn’t moved by music anymore.

Enter the Turnpike Troubadours.

It happened at Busch Stadium on a “long, hot summer day.” Matt Carpenter, then the third baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals, walked up to the plate. If you’ve never been to a professional baseball game, players choose a walk-up song that plays when they’re announced. Carpenter’s song was “Long Hot Summer Day,” a Turnpike Troubadours cover of a John Hartford song. It had a certain jingle to it that caught my attention. It wasn’t your typical “get hyped” anthem. I guess Carpenter got into the zone to the words of…

For every day I work on the Illinois River
Get a half a day off with pay
Old tow boat pickin’ up barges
On a long hot summer day

After three or four times of Carpenter coming to the plate and hearing that chorus, I had to know the band behind the music. I typed the lyrics into my phone for a quick Google search and discovered the Oklahoma-born-and-bred band: the Turnpike Troubadours.

That moment marked a new musical journey and began the process of restoring my music soul. Looking back, I think nostalgia played a role. Baseball was a big part of my life. The Cardinals were my team. I played college ball at a small private school in Southwest Arkansas and logged a lot of hours working on the field while Rascal Flatts, Kenny Chesney, and Pat Green played over the loudspeakers. Maybe Turnpike brought all that rushing back. Whatever it was, I was hooked.

I dove into their catalog and found a thread connecting them to my ska and emo roots—they, too, weren’t mainstream. They were country, yes, but they were alt-country: an underground resurgence of singer-songwriters exploring themes far deeper than the Country Top 40 norm. No big trucks, blond babes, or bingeing booze. Alt-country told stories of heartbreak, addiction, working-class struggle, doubt, and redemption. It was raw, it was real, and it made you feel something.

I’m not going to run through their full catalog, but consider these gems from the Troubadours:

Good Lord Lorrie — a song about not being good enough for the “dark-haired daughter of Southwest Arkansas”:

“Good Lord Lorrie, could it go more wrong.”

The Funeral — no commentary needed, just the lyric:

“But Jimmy looked at Mama / Mama just looked down / She said, ‘Why’s it take a funeral, boy, to bring you back to town?’”

Diamonds and Gasoline — How do you describe the decision to get married and settle down or commit to a life of performing out on the road?

“And I would buy for you a diamond or myself some gasoline / If I can’t afford you, darlin’, then I can’t afford to dream.”

Cross Canadian Ragweed says boys from Oklahoma “roll their joints all wrong,” but boy, can these boys from Oklahoma write their songs all right.

To stretch the CCR reference, Turnpike became my gateway drug into all that Alt-country and its adjacent genres had to offer. After Turnpike came Jason Isbell, then Josh Ritter, Ruston Kelly (Dirt Emo), John Moreland, and many others.

And eventually, the Troubadours led me to reconnect with John Prine, the titanic songwriter from whom many of these alt-country artists drew their inspiration. Prine was my dad’s favorite singer-songwriter. When we were in the car, Prine’s cassettes were playing as my dad strummed his air acoustic guitar and sang the words. I didn’t get it then. But I do now.

My dad died not too long after this musical renaissance within me. In that season, these alt-country artists and their songs moved from casual friends to close companions. See the Josh Ritter example from last week’s Swap. These songs helped interpret that time—and the times that followed.

Since then, I’ve seen many of these artists live. It’s one more gift from the day I encountered the Troubadours. After your music soul is saved, you want to sing your favorite songs with a few hundred other converts. A friend from the emo days and I now joke that live music is “cheap therapy”—you trade some middle-aged man’s overpriced leather couch (shoutout to Noah Kahan) for a $30 GA seat to a show.

All that to say, thanks to the Turnpike Troubadours, music was once again back in my life.

Can music save your mortal soul? The answer is no. Only Easter can help you there. But music can bring joy. It can create lifelong memories with good friends. And it can give you a song to sing for just about anything life throws your way.

In the same way alt-country brought soul and substance back to country music, it did the same for me. The Turnpike Troubadours saved my music soul.

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Kody Gibson is a regular contributor to the Music Swap. He loves going to shows with his friends. He is dying to see Noah Kahan live, but hasn’t found the money.

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Make sure to check out that new Turnpike Troubadours album. It might save your music soul.

-TheMusicSwap