Photo credit: Ian McFarlane

Randall Bramblett’s latest record Pine Needle Fire is set for release on November 13^th New West Records will issue the 12-song album, which is Bramblett’s follow-up to 2017’s highly regarded Juke Joint At The Edge Of The World. Bramblett who has worked with Steve Winwood, Widespread Panic, Gregg Allman, Bonnie Raitt and many others over the course of his career notes that Pine Needle Fire is “about time passing, or at least grappling with the realization that you don’t have an infinite amount of time left like you think you do when you’re young. So there’s the mortality part of it. And then another part has to do with our current situation in this country. I grew up protesting in the ‘60s and ‘70s, so I’ve always felt connected to politics. Now I’m really hung up on it. And you look around and there’s a lot of people that are kind of desperate for change and for justice…or maybe they’re just desperate. They’re trying to hang on in this world. I’m one of them. Most of us are, to some degree.”

Today we premiere “Rocket to Nowhere” from the forthcoming album which is now available for pre-order. Bramblett tells Relix that it “is a darkly humorous (at least to me) song that I wrote last year from the codependent perspective.  All the verses detail in the second person the escapades of a drug and alcohol addled lover who is bent on self-destruction and the first person chorus just gives in to the need for him/her to come back home. My experience with recovery from addiction lets me have a little sense of humor about this stuff.  I also got to use some phrases that make me smile like ‘go out and have yourself a blessed day,’ ‘Kid Charlemagne skipping in the ragged jukebox of your brain’ and ‘at least they didn’t look in the glove compartment.’  The music is funky with a wah wah wurlitzer piano and Nick Johnson’s tight R & B guitar licks. The horns remind me of the VFW Club on Saturday night. Who knows what will happen to these two characters but it will probably be danceable…”