If there ever was a modern-day outlaw movement, count Joey Frendo as one of these present-day Highwaymen. With a snakeskin rumble tumble musical presentation, Frendo conveys an authoritative backwoods howl and a gritty ambiance.
After building his brand on the soulful hooks and detailed arrangements of 2021’s Stone Mason’s Son EP, Frendo returns in 2023 with his debut full-length offering Bound for Heartache.
Glide is premiering Frendo’s “Old-Fashioned Country Singer,” a picturesque winner that raises the temperature with its tasty lap steel and slow-crawling tremolo.
I wrote “Old-Fashioned Country Singer” late in 2020, just before moving to Tulsa, in one sitting on my front porch. I’d spent a lot of my pandemic listening to classic country records and delving into the mythology comes along with country music, the story of Hank William’s death being just one of the threads I’d tugged at. The lore of it all is powerful, and I wanted to capture a piece of that in this song,” says Frendo.
“I had toyed around with the arrangement some and just couldn’t land on something that felt definitive, but the night before I drove to Little Rock to record, I stumbled upon the little opening lick on the acoustic guitar and started thinking of the song with a little bluesier shading and it immediately felt right. Jesse Aycock really drove that vibe home with his lap steel part, and we did some fun studio tricks and sonic things with this one that make it stand out a bit. It was a blast to record and immediately jumped out at all of us during the session.”
