Photo by Phil DeSimone

The Ries Brothers dropped their latest LP, Paint Your Emotion, on Sept. 18, 2020. “The first album we made was stylistically all over the place so, for the second one, we really just wanted to hone in [on] the feeling you get at a Ries Brothers show,” lead singer and simultaneous drummer/bassist Charlie Ries told Relix. Today, we are premiering the new music video for “Troubadour,” a standout track from Paint Your Emotion.

“[‘Troubadour’] was actually the first song we recorded from the new album, as it’s one of the older songs on the album,” Charlie Ries told Relix. “It’s about a traveling musician trying to make enough money to get home to see their their significant other, their family members or someone they’re close to. It’s about the sacrifices you make for the ones you love, and also about being a traveling musician.”

The song is a collaboration with Iya Terra and features vocals from the Reggae band’s Nathan Feinstein. “We had played two tours with Iya Terra, and we thought Nathan’s voice would be perfect on this track,” Charlie explained of the collaboration. “So we sent it over to him and he dug so he threw down his verse. We love the dynamic we share with their band–we just had a great chemistry when we were on those tours, so I thought it would be cool if we tracked together.”

The video was shot this past summer around the Fourth of July in Key West, Fla., while the band was doing a few outdoor, acoustic performances.

“The song’s kind of bluesy, so we wanted to give it a Southern feel,” Charlie continued. “In the beginning [of our career], we mostly just toured in the South, so we know a lot of those areas very well, so we kind of wrote about that and it fit the style of the song. We found some awesome places down in Key West that kind of have a New Orleans vibe–they’re kind of similar, like Bourbon Street and Key West’s Duval Street. It’s definitely a similar kind of vibe down there, so it tied in well with the song to shoot it down there.”

Watch the new video below!