Photo courtesy Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors
Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors
Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors
Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors glide into focus with Strangers No More, an airy, anthemic album threaded with uplift and strength. Far from giving into a fear of the time we have left, Holcomb and the Neighbors–guitarist Nathan Dugger, bassist Rich Brinsfield, drummer Will Sayles and keyboardist Ian Miller–instead concentrate on the goodness and virtue still readily available to those who seek it. They will perform April 16 at Turner Hall Ballroom.
“We got back on stage together in the spring of ‘21,” said Holcomb. “We were starting to play some festivals and some socially distanced shows—it was still a weird time, but we were out there doing it. People were figuring out ways to have concerts and we were saying ‘yes’ to whatever came our way just because we missed being on the road. We were really hitting as a band! I think having 18 months of playing together taken from us created a lot of anticipation and joy, so when we got back on stage, it was some of the best performances we’d ever done together. Something happened to me as well in that time where I became very keenly aware that this is my life’s work and that I don't wanna do anything else.”
The group’s previous effort, 2019’s Dragons, found the Tennessee native exploring closer-to-home notions of his children and wife—singer-songwriter (and enduring Neighbor) Ellie Holcomb—but Strangers No More widens the aperture to allow for a grander, more inclusive picture.
Family Record
“Dragons was very much a record about my immediate family. I’ve got a song about my grandfather, I’ve got a song about my kids, I’ve got a couple songs about Ellie—and that’s not to say that's the only thing that record was about,” Holcomb said. “‘End Of The World’ was a song about the ways we're divided and how the other side always tells you, ‘If we follow your path, it's all coming to an end!’ There's always been some of that in my writing, but I think this record, I was able to write more introspectively but also more universally.”
Recorded with Cason Cooley at Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville, North Carolina, the album channels the angst of the 2020 lockdown into a rejuvenating tonic, “Find Your People” stomps and claps underneath Dugger’s rolling banjo.
"‘Find Your People’ is a big song about friendship. A lot of these songs are bigger themes that cast a wider net of what I'm writing about, who I’m writing about, but I think in the same way,” Holcomb said. “The common thread for me is that all of those things, whether it’s a song like ‘Dragons’ about my grandfather, or it’s a song like ‘Dance with Everybody’—which is an ode to the audience—there’s still a we’re-in-this-thing-together mentality that I try to hold to in my writing. But I’m particularly proud, especially sonically of this record. I think we've put some music and sound and voices to that in a way that we haven’t done before.”
“Dance With Everybody” recalls Bruce Springsteen’s “Promised Land” with a splash of Caribbean flavor and unabashed optimism in the face of the dust cloud. Written with Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, it’s a good-timing tune with deeper conviction.
Divided Time
“We live in a really divided time where we’re sort of trained via social media and regular media. I don’t know whether it's an algorithm or they just know what drives profit margins, but there’s a lot of value on division and isolation,” said Holcomb. “But there’s all of these sociological factors happening at once that have led us to this place where the big narrative is that we all hate each other, and we’re divided. What I’ve actually seen in smaller communities, whether it's people who love ‘X’ band or whether it's your neighbors or your family, it doesn’t have to be that way. There's still a human element that is worth fighting for. Some of these songs are my punches.
“Some of the big anthemic songs that I've put out in the last few years—‘Ring The Bells’ or ‘End Of The World,’ ‘Family,’ or on this record with ‘Find Your People’ and ‘All The Money in the World,’ ‘Dance With Everybody’—those songs get inspired by the idea of singing in a huge space,” Holcomb said. “I’ve always been a fan of that kind of music, but I think because we weren't playing those type of places, I sort of limited myself to th
