The reputation of David Quinn should already be arresting to fans and contemporaries in the Americana and Country scenes. Yet his upcoming third album titled Country Fresh isn’t hiding what his most recent flavor entails. Country Fresh is due out April 15th and was born from a logo on a decades-old ashtray he found in a corner nook at Nashville’s Sound Emporium while tracking his previous record. The amber glass piece had seen better days, but it was the words “Country Fresh” imprinted on the side in its vintage font that grabbed Quinn’s attention. “I never stopped thinking about it and started using the phrase ‘country fresh’ to describe how I was living and all the things that I like. It just stuck with me and once I wrote the song ‘Country Fresh’ it ended up being the whole theme of the record.”
In the wake of the pandemic back in 2020, Quinn left his adopted headquarters of Chicago in favor of a move to rural Indiana, into a house on a lake. This new — dare we say “Country Fresh” — setting enabled him to tap into the nostalgia of his childhood and rev up his creativity. For years he had been trying to find the words to describe his sound and what set it apart from his contemporaries. Last year, it finally hit him: he was making Black Dirt Country music. It’s the sound of midwestern storytelling, in the vein of his biggest influence, the country folk of John Prine, who was also born and raised in Illinois.
Armed with a dozen new songs after soaking up his new life in the woods, Quinn decided that for this album he’d up the ante and produce it himself. Returning to Sound Emporium with handpicked players, including Laur Joamets (Drivin N Cryin) on slide guitar and solos, Micah Hulscher (Emmylou Harris) on piano, Fats Kaplin (John Prine) on fiddle, dobro, banjo and harmonica, Miles Miller (Sturgill Simpson) on drums, Jamie T. Davis (Margo Price) on guitar and Brett Resnick (Kacey Musgraves) on pedal steel, the album was engineered and mixed by Mike Stankiewicz (Willie Nelson, Shooter Jennings, Jason Isbell) and mastered by John Baldwin Mastering (The Rolling Stones, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristopherson).
Glide is premiering the lead track “Down Home,” (below) from Quinn’s Country Fresh; a rollicking jaunt of slinky country boogie mixed with a rough & tumble edge. There is an undeniable Waylon musical bounce, yet also a modern alt-country grit that shakes up the folk pleasantries surrounding our ears. “Down Home” surely has the feet to become a live favorite of Quinn’s sets as he’ll soon be on track to headline large clubs around the southeast.“It was the first song we tracked in the studio for this record and I believe we ended up using the first take for most of it. I think that nervous energy of the first take and first song of the session really worked for the song itself. I was listening to a lot of Waylon Jennings, Charlie Daniels Band and John Anderson when I wrote this song. I think the groove of the song is definitely influenced by Waylon Jennings. He always seemed to do that groove best,” admits Quinn.