Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ frontman and guitarist Kevn Kinney detailed a new solo album, Think About It, available to order on December 9. The record features an all-star list of contributors including members of R.E.M., Col. Bruce Hampton’s band and more.
Think About It is Kinney’s first solo album in a decade and his first LP on vinyl since his 1990 solo debut, MacDougal Blues. Kinney captured Think About It in the music mecca of Athens, Georgia with help from renowned producer David Barbe (Drive-By Truckers, Lee Bains, Son Volt). Along with R.E.M. founding members Peter Buck and Bill Berry, the record also contains contributions from Brad Morgan of Drive-By Truckers, Laur Joamets (Drivin N Cryin, Midland, Sturgill Simpson) and more.
Kinney also enlisted musicians from Col. Bruce Hampton’s band as the late legend helped to inspire Think About It. Kevn explained:
“When Col. Bruce died [back in 2017], I had the idea of taking a different approach, having all these different styles of musicians play with me—something, in the spirit of Bruce, that was a little more out there. I really loved his bass player Kevin Scott [The Pharaoh Gummit] and his drummer Darren Stanley [The Madrid Express, Jimmy Herring, Larkin Poe], who are these really accomplished jazz guys. So I had them in mind, and I also really wanted to go into the studio with David Barbe again, who I’d worked with back in 2004 on a project called the Sun Tangled Angel Revival, and who had been an engineer on MacDougal Blues. The idea was to do something a little more spoken word, singing in a lower register than usual for some of it, and using words to paint these picturesque landscapes. I didn’t want to fill in all the spaces; I wanted to have a lot more air for things to grow from.”
As Kinney touched on, the 11-track Think About It contains an eclectic mix of music. Largely recorded during the pandemic, the record also sees the singer-songwriter tackling the paradoxical dichotomy of isolation in the face of a hyper-connected modern world.
“It’s a very introspective and lonely record, and a very personal record for me,” Kinney noted. “Really, it’s a record for people to listen to by themselves. There’s a lot of longing and thinking in it. I grew up in a version of America and the world before even answering machines or Star 69. The album expresses this desire to have time to actually ponder and reflect—like, give me a minute, let me think about it.”
“The whole record is a Jim Jarmusch black-and-white soundtrack to being lonely, and just sitting on a park bench by yourself,” Kinney added, “all the conversations we have with ourselves while sitting alone waiting to do things, doing our best to be our best, and wondering, ‘Am I in touch with my ego? Am I in touch with who I think I am? With who I thought I was gonna be? Is this the payoff? Is the payoff coming? What even is that, and where do I stand in the world?”
Kinney shared four tracks to preview the record. Check them out below:
Think About It Tracklist:
- Think About It
- Catching Up To Myself
- Wishes
- The Innocent
- Shapeshifter Grifter
- Half Mast
- Down In The City
- Another Scarlet Butterfly
- Close The Door
- Stop Look Listen Think
- Never The Twain Sahll Meet
