Texas rockers Whiskey Myers recently dropped their new album, Tornillo, and with it, the raucous southern gentlemen have crafted a groove-filled record full of tune, such as the new single “The Wolf,” which guitarist John Jeffers says has “some spank to it.” In an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, Jeffers shares details about the new album, confessing there was “just such a process” to finally get it released.
“We’re just ready for it to be out, for people to hear it because we’ve heard it for, we’ve listened to it for a pretty good while now,” he said. “We’re just patiently waiting for everybody else to be able to hear it. At this point, it’s kind of like every other record. It’s just like, let’s go, let’s get it out, but it is not that easy. Everybody wants to do it a certain way, but there’s a lot of competition and there’s structure and there’s a proper way to put out records and sometimes you have to have pretty good patience.”
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Having been a band for 15 years now, Whiskey Myers has, almost like clockwork, put out an album every three years. When asked if he feels like the band never really stops working. “Yeah, especially having kids and family and stuff now, it kind of feels that way sometimes, but we’re used to it, man. That’s what we’ve done, I’ve been touring since I was 19 or 20. It’s like, that’s what we’ve always done. If we sit stagnant too long, I think everybody starts to, it’s like, ‘Okay, what are we doing? Where are we going?’” he said.
Jeffers continued: “COVID was a pretty good example for the whole world, of course, but at a certain point it was like, ‘Hey, this is cool, we’re getting a break.’ We’ve never had a break in 15, or 14 years at that point. It was like, this is pretty cool. By about month two, it’s like, oh, well, what are we doing? Are we still sitting at home? Are we ever going to go back and tour again? We just get antsy, we’re used to it.”
The newest album, Tornillo, was not written entirely during the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown, with Jeffers clarifying, “You know, some of those songs were already written. I couldn’t say that not all of them were written during that, but definitely a couple of them. There’s a couple of tunes in there that whenever you dive into lyrics, you can tell. It’s got a little bit, there’s one or two that may have some more current value to it than normal.”
He went on to say, “Having kids, that showed up a little bit in Cody [Cannon, lead vocalist] and mine’s writing. It’s the same stuff. The only thing that we kind of change is we’ve always wanted to have brass and horns and we toured so much, we’ve always been on tour during records so we would go into the studio, go back on tour, and we’d flip flop between the both and this time we actually had the time to bring in the horn section and do something we wanted to do for a long time so we’re pretty happy about it.”
One of the absolute best songs on Tornillo is one of Whiskey Myers’ newest singles, “The Wolf,” which has a ZZ Top-esque guitar riff backed by brass horns, and a chorus that simply HAVE to sing along to. Jeffers confirmed that Cannon wrote the track and added, “It’s got some spank to it.” He continued, “I can’t really speak for Cody, he wrote that song. I think there’s a little angst. We’ve always had this sort of a chip on our shoulders. I don’t know whether we grew up that way or if being in this business and the hardships that you have to go through, sometimes you get a little chip on your shoulder. Sometimes it shows up in the lyrics I would imagine.”
Tornillo is now available to stream or own. Fans can head to the Whiskey Myers website for details on how to listen, as well as for concert info. Check out our complete interview with Jeffers in the video above. Stay locked to PopCulture.com for more big country music news and exclusives!
