We’re living in an exciting time in country music history. The biggest stars are stylish, interesting characters who generally make good music and regularly vie for the music industry’s top accolades. It’s a far cry from the 2010s, when it wasn’t terribly fashionable to look beyond Music City’s prevailing trends.
But even as good as things are nowadays, it still sometimes seems like those same independently-minded heroes aren’t quite getting their due.
As I survey the country music landscape, I can’t help but feel that this is true of the Turnpike Troubadours. These red dirt forefathers are currently releasing some of the best music of their storied career and continue to set o new touring milestones annually.
Even so, it still doesn’t feel like they’re quite getting their due.
At this point, you, the reader, may ask, “Well, so what? I like Turnpike just fine, and I thought The Price of Admission was a good album. Why do I need to read a whole article about how great this band is?”
Very simple: what the Turnpike Troubadours are doing today should be an essential blueprint for how a contemporary country artist should age, going well beyond the red-dirt niche.
But first, let’s grapple with the fact that the band’s having any measure of mainstream success is an anomaly in itself. In 2019, the band broke up for three full years, over two years after the release of their last LP and following a disastrous stretch of messy performances.
Moreover, their comeback effort, A Cat In the Rain, was a pretty far cry from their previous four LPs; obvious growing pains with Shooter Jennings in the producer’s chair kept the record from feeling as gutsy, confessional, or heartwarming as A Long Way From Your Heart and its predecessors.
In just about every possible way, the deck was stacked against Turnpike to transcend their decade-long status as a relative cult favorite into a nationwide arena draw. But somehow, they did it anyway.
In this phase of the band’s life cycle, Evan Felker and company are building their reputation on the two time-tested components that have been their cornerstones since the beginning: Evan Felker’s poetic mastery of folk balladry, and their winsome, mutual love of the alt-country greats that came before them.
As we discussed last year, the band’s latest album, The Price of Admission, came as a welcome surprise and a remarkable return to the humble chronicles of their early years. But if that wasn’t enough, they’ve kept fans satiated with discreet cover songs of vintage Todd Snider and Robert Earl Keen cuts. These aren’t exactly classics, but they’re apparent favorites of the band, which signifies something important: the band is deep in their bag of influences and having fun creating together.
This is half of the aforementioned blueprint for a “legacy act” in country music.
(No, before you ask, we won’t be highlighting their contribution to the Yo Gabba Gabba soundtrack; but it certainly wasn’t forgotten)!
Despite having renewed creative vigor and releasing some of their best work in the last year, Turnpike has seemed very comfortable presenting as the elder statesmen of this generation’s red dirt movement. When they tour, they regularly fill their sets with classic tracks and little-known cover songs, and often team with other veteran Okie acts like Cross Canadian Ragweed, much like two classic rock bands on a nostalgia tour together.
The band is also aware of their distinct influence in Oklahoma, where they’re more than just a country music band but a part of regional folklore. As such, they’ve made a point of overserving their core market with their “Boys From Oklahoma” shows, which have enabled them to play football stadiums usually reserved for the likes of Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan.
As a band, the Turnpike Troubadours have a decisive sense of who they are and what really matters to them, and they’re using it to squeeze every ounce of juice out of the apples they’ve been given.
In 2019, it was hard to fathom this level of consistent stability from the band, whose lineup seemed much closer to Motley Crue than to Def Leppard at the time. But as a group, they present as self-assured about their legacy and, better yet, seem to love still playing music together. As Evan Felker remarked to Rolling Stone in 2024, “There’s a thing that happens when you’ve worked with someone for a long time that’s just magic.”
Where most arena-level country acts in their 40s and 50s are twisting themselves into creative knots to reinvent themselves into a newer, cooler product, Turnpike has embraced their age confidently, and made better music as a result.
There’s something significant about being the “cool old guys” before you’re too old to be ignored entirely. The term “legacy act” doesn’t have to be pejorative; it can be a source of freedom from the rat race of vying for contemporary clout. They create without guardrails, perform the biggest shows of their career without the pressure to promote, and uphold their mythical reputation as one of the greats.
With their influence felt across the Gen Z singer-songwriter scene in the likes of Zach Bryan and Wyatt Flores, the Turnpike Troubadours don’t feel boring and crusty. These days, it’s easy to imagine them carrying on for another two decades or more, secure in their legacy and timeless in their craft.