Our Song of the Day comes via the new video for Dirty Rain, the latest single from American troubadour Andrew Combs. It features on his forthcoming third album Canyons Of My Mind (out on Loose in the UK on April 7). There’s no doubt that Combs is right up there with fellow contemporaries from the scene such as Courtney Marie Andrews and Sturgill Simpson.
Back in 2014, we featured a live review of his gig at London’s Green Note, his skill as a contemporary a songwriter made a big impression:
Sitting at the edge of the stage, hat raised halfway up his forehead, in a tan jacket and blue jeans, Combs could be lighting up a cold December evening on Bleecker Street in ’68, but his songs have more muscle and grit than the folk troubadours of the Greenwich scene. He’s also considerably more contemporary, introducing one new song called Fooling as ‘..probably about Facebook’. Its rolling beat and great middle-eight segue into the slower Tennessee Time, written when he lived for a while in Galway and was missing home. Read the full review here.
Dirty Rain demonstrates that skill still further with its bleak picture of a near-future dystopia where the very idea of green spaces has been annihilated. You can expect to hear a lot more from Combs in coming months as this new album is sure to stir up a lot of interest. Canyons of my Mind features an 11-song set, co-produced by Skylar Wilson (Justin Townes Earle, Caitlin Rose) & Jordan Lehning (Rodney Crowell, Caitlin Rose) and recorded at Battle Tapes Studio in East Nashville, TN.
Speaking of the new album, he said “When I set out to record my last album, I had a distinct vision of what I wanted the record to sound like. It was a cocktail of the Roy Orbison, Glen Campbell, Nilsson vibes that you can hear right there on the surface, Canyons Of My Mind is much more personal. It’s a testament to my acceptance of who I am as a man, and who I am becoming.”
In other recent news this week, Andrew Combs has also confirmed in the lineup for the 20th Anniversary Kilkenny Roots Festival alongside the likes of the Handsome Family and Joan Shelly.