Following the release of their debut album, we spoke to Restless Road about the record and their journey so far.
Hi guys, congratulations on the album release, does it feel very strange to now have it out in the world?
Definitely does, we’re really excited, it’s been a whirlwind. It feels like a very restless relief. We have worked a lot of years and put a lot of time and energy into this project, so for all the people that have followed us for so long, it feels really nice just to be able to give back to them and give them a full album. We’ve released individual songs before but we’ve never been able to put up a full album and body of work. We’re excited for people to get to know us start to finish.
Digging into the album and how many sounds you’ve got on there, it feels reflective of your sonic journey from those initial singles you put out. There’s bluegrass elements and there’s a lot more depth than perhaps on those early tracks. Are you glad that the album release came when it did and you’ve had time to hone your sound and find out exactly where you guys wanted it to land?
Yeah, definitely, we’ve written hundreds and hundreds of songs to get to this point. A lot of times you write songs and they never come to me, but they’re just leading you to the next thing. We’re a melting pot in this group. We’re all from somewhere different in the US, we’ve all grown up with different family backgrounds and all that stuff. When we come together to make this album, you hear a lot of different influences and different genres. There’s definitely different sounds on this album and that’s definitely one of the best parts of Restless Road. You hear that best with the first song on the album and the last song.
It hits you like a ton of bricks. The first bars of ‘Last Rodeo‘ strike you as something different and special.
Thank you. Yeah, we kind of feel like those songs really sum up what we want the album to say, it’s all about perseverance, resilience and never giving up on your dreams. Both songs really represent the way that Restless Road sound, even though they’re both completely opposite – they show the different sides of us.
That’s the magic of you guys as a band. When you go down the tracklist, you’ve got different configurations of how you write – there’s some with all of you, some duos – and when you’re listening through, different people take the lead. I feel with other trios there’s always a frontman, but that balance really makes you guys stand out – in my mind. Has that been a conscious decision over the years?
Yeah, I mean when we started the band in 2013, we always had this dream of bringing that mindset to country music, because as you say trios typically have a lead singer and they don’t trade off leads, but we always wanted to do that. We’ve had a lot of push back over the years on that. People would always say that the listeners wouldn’t get it and they’d get confused, and now I think that what everyone thought was a weakness is actually our strength. That’s what makes us unique. That plays into the album, we really wanted to show that we never gave up our dream of what Restless Road was and we tried to make this album to be where if you heard any of these songs, you couldn’t hear anyone but us singing them.
It’s a treat for the ears. I feel you’re constantly surprised and you never know what to expect from the next song on the album. Can you talk through selecting the songs for the record?
Yeah, we started the album off with ‘Last Rodeo,’ which we were actually originally going to call it ‘On My Way,’ because we love that song. Those songs sum up the journey we’ve been on and we really wanted to speak to people about pushing for the next thing and not letting anything get in your way, just being resilient. Last minute though, we wrote ‘Last Rodeo,’ and that was just such a fun upbeat song which had the same message, so we decided to go for that as the title track and start the album off with that energy, take people on a journey and then end it with ‘On My Way,’ as an introduction to Restless Road. We just wanted people to take away that message and feel empowered by that, as well as that we have love songs and drinking songs and everything in between. We just wanted to take people on a journey and see different parts of our lives.
Well there are three of you in the band with different lives, so the album needs to reflect those different experiences. Obviously you also have that collaboration that comes later in the album with Erin Kinsey and I wanted to ask you about that track and how it came about?
We’ve been fans of Erin for a number of years now, we’ve been following her career and when we were finishing up the album, we were talking about how we really wanted to do a duet with a female vocalist. We thought it would be really cool with our band. We had the song ‘Most Nights’ and it was perhaps the oldest song that we wrote on the album and we’d always talked about how we wished that song had it’s moment. We thought it was the perfect time to put it on the album. Luckily, Erin picked up the phone on the first ring, she agreed to do the song before she ever even heard it and she absolutely nailed it. We actually got to play it with her acoustically for the first time and she crushes it. We’re so excited to be bringing her with us on our headline tour in January and to be able to play it every night.
’10 Things’ gave me a laugh. Can you talk about that track and bringing that levity to the album?
10 Things was a song that I kind of sung to myself as a lullaby and therapy for me. I just couldn’t get it out of my head. When we were finishing the album, I was going through a breakup and so I had a handful of heartbreak songs. That was one of my favourites, because we’d never done something like that before. I love those kinds of songs that come out of nowhere and I love the chorus – I think everyone can relate to that at some point.
Then you’ve got the other side of the coin with ‘Growing Old With You,’ Charles Kelley is such a stalwart in the industry.
Yeah, we put out that song almost two years ago now. We had got the opportunity to play on The Bachelor and we were working out which song to play, and remembered we had gotten this song from Charles Kelley with his vocals on it. Anyone who’s a fan of Lady A will know that his voice is – to me – one of the best in country music. We heard the song with his vocals on and we thought we have to cut this. It was hard to top that and to put our own spin on it. We cut it and Charles sent us a text to say that we’d taken it to the next level. It’s changed our lives and we’ve got to play it all over. It was our first introduction to a lot of people, so it had to make the album.
Obviously you’re hitting the road soon, but what else can we expect from you guys?
Well we just announced The Last Rodeo tour – tickets for that are on sale now. So we can’t wait to get out on the road and to see the fan reaction to these songs. We’re just excited for life after our first album. Album number two.
Pick up a copy of Last Rodeo here.
