Photo by Jason Thrasher

Drive-By Truckers have announced that they will release their second album of 2020 this coming Friday, Oct. 2, titled The New OK. The album will arrive just a few months after the Truckers’ previous 2020 release, The Unraveling. The new album will mark their 13th studio effort. In addition to the album announcement, the band also shared the title track for the record (listen below).

According to a press release, The New OK was “originally conceived as a quarantine EP collecting material recorded in Memphis during sessions for The Unraveling–including a fiery cover of The Ramones’ classic ‘The KKK Took My Baby Away’ (vocals by bassist Matt Patton).” However, the release notes that “the project quickly grew to include provocative new songs written and recorded over what Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood calls ‘this endless summer of protests, riots, political shenanigans and pandemic horrors.'”

“To call these past few months trying would be a dramatic understatement,” Hood continued (via release). “Our lives are intertwined with our work in ways that give us our best songs and performances. It is a life that has often rewarded us beyond our wildest dreams. Speaking for myself, I don’t have hobbies, I have this thing I do. To be sidelined with a brand new album and have to sit idly while so much that I love and hold dear falls apart before my very eyes has been intense, heartbreaking, anger provoking and very depressing. It has gone to the very heart of our livelihoods and threatened near everything that we have spent our lives trying to build. Here’s to the hope that we can make 2021 a better year than this one has been. In the meantime, here’s to The New OK!”

Check out the album cover and full tracklist below, and listen to “The New OK” here.

The New OK Tracklist:
The New Ok
Tough To Let Go
The Unraveling
The Perilous Night
Sarah’s Flame
Sea Island Lonely
The Distance
Watching The Orange Clouds
The KKK Took My Baby Away