In 2024, John Leventhal released his debut solo record, Rumble Strip. This album appeared over 40 years into a career during which he has produced music for Shawn Colvin, Sarah Jarosz, William Bell, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Jim Lauderdale, and his wife, Rosanne Cash. He also has written, recorded and performed with Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, Bruce Hornsby, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Ry Cooder, and numerous other artists.

The six-time Grammy winner won’t wait another 40 years for his follow-up as National Drift is set to come out on October 2. Leventhal describes this collection as a “found album” that emerged while recording improvisation for Cash’s upcoming Blue Note release. “When I Walked to the River,” the first track from National Drift is now streaming and also appears below.

This new record of instrumental music is an ideal complement to Rumble Strip.  As Leventhal told Relix around time of that release, “I’m inherently a writer as well as a musician and a record producer. I write all the time and there’s a bunch of stuff that never found a home. Then, around 2015, I began asking myself: ‘What are you waiting for? Why don’t you see if you can make a recording on your own?’ When the pandemic came, I really didn’t have an excuse. Rosanne and I live in a brownstone in New York City with a recording studio that I built about eight years ago. Here we were with nowhere to go and a recording studio on the first floor. So I jettisoned all my preconceptions about what my record was going to be, and I just started writing and recording without editing myself in the hopes that some kind of direction would reveal itself.”

National Drift is available for Pre-order and pre-save.