Few bands working in Americana today understand the value of community quite like The Deslondes. The New Orleans outfit has always balanced reverence for tradition with a restless urge to keep the conversation moving forward, and on their upcoming release Don’t Let It Die Vol. 1, arriving May 22nd via New West Records (PRE-ORDER), they lean fully into both instincts.
The 12-track collection was tracked to analog tape at the band’s own studio in New Orleans, giving the record the kind of warm, lived-in spirit that has become a hallmark of their sound. Produced by band member John James Tourville alongside Ajaï Combelic of Sabine McCalla, the album follows the band’s widely praised 2024 LP Roll It Out and finds the group revisiting songs that helped shape them—while making room for the voices still shaping them now.
Rather than assembling a straightforward tribute album, The Deslondes approached Don’t Let It Die Vol. 1 as something more personal. The set moves easily between songs by heroes like Swamp Dogg, Shelby Lynne, Johnny Cash, and Clifton Chenier, and newer material from friends, collaborators, and fellow road warriors like Nick Woods and Pat Reedy.
Perhaps unintentionally, the record feels eerily in tune with the present moment. The first half of the album circles themes of collapse and survival, from Swamp Dogg’s nuclear-fallout meditation “The World Beyond” to Cash’s ghost-town narrative “The Ballad of Boot Hill” and Drunken Prayer’s small-town elegy “Cordelia.” It begins at the end of the world and gradually works its way toward renewal, with the title track landing as both a plea and a mission statement—a reaffirmation of the band’s values and the people around them.
That unity is what gives Don’t Let It Die Vol. 1 its pulse. The record crackles with the looseness and chemistry of a band built on instinct, full of hellos and goodbyes, departures and returns. It sounds like musicians chasing songs that matter—not just because they’ve lasted, but because they still have something urgent to say.
Today, Glide is excited to offer an exclusive premiere of the standout track “Try Again,” a beautiful song that the band first heard sung by The Kernal and one that feels like it could easily have been written and performed by The Band with its distinctively beautiful Southern soul. The Deslondes take this sentiment and push it even more with piano and their signature harmonies packing an emotional wallop. Their version feels almost spiritual, with the vocals capturing the song’s plea for another chance and the sharp guitar slicing through. As they pick up the tempo and burst into radiant, choir-like vocals, it almost sounds like you are listening to the spiritually enlightened 70s rock of George Harrison.
“I heard the Kernal and his band play this song for the first time many years ago. It was just this lost epic soul song, stuck into their set of mostly country numbers. It stuck with me. It’s got a very simple message of persistence, and maybe even redemption. It sounded like a plaintive plea for another chance. You wanna hope he got one.” -Dan Cutler
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