by Aprille Hanson-Spivey & Julian Spivey
20. Bossier City
“Bossier City,” originally recorded on the group’s hard-to-find 2007 debut of the same name and re-recorded for 2015’s self-titled album, is a fun, harmonica-filled song about a man gambling and drinking his money and cares away. Because after all, “What Mama don’t know won’t hurt her.” This song has always been a fun one to sing along to at a bar scene concert. They’ve gotten too big for those venues now, which is great, but also a shame because songs like this are perfect in that environment. The lyrics are catchy, but it’s really the harmonica that makes the song. AHS
19. Down on Washington
Turnpike Troubadours’ sophomore release (the first one they really hit with) Diamonds & Gasoline (2010) is such a pivotal album for us as Turnpike fans that we have eight of the album’s 12 tracks on this list. “Down on Washington,” the first of those eight on this list, tells the tale of a man falling for a woman he absolutely should not be falling for – my reading of the song is it’s a stripper – and he knows it. The chorus to the song is one of the many catchy and fun ones from this album to sing aloud at their live shows. JS
18. Long Hot Summer Day
This is one of Turnpike’s most popular songs and one of the very few that Evan Felker didn’t pen himself. It was originally written by John Hartford and released in 1976. It’s the first song I remember hearing from the group, on 2010’s Diamonds & Gasoline, so it holds a special place in my heart since they are my favorite band now. It’s about a barge worker on the Illinois river doing back-breaking work. It’s not a lyrically deep song – just describing the work, but it’s a fun melody, making it a favorite for fans. AHS
17. Time of Day
One of my favorite Turnpike songs, “Time of Day,” on their self-titled 2015 album, is just as sweet as honeysuckle. It’s a cute love song that’s as southern as the lyrics, “Hillbilly girl just as sweet as wine / Grew up in the thicket like a muscadine.” The man just wants a “minute of your time of day,” clearly out of her league. Evan Felker is truly southern, so the lyrics just hit beautifully with his drawl. My favorite lines: “Well I never go and fall in love too quick / Never have and never will now / Well that’s the kinda liquor that’ll make a man sick / You try to fool me into thinking that you’re so refined / But you’re the kind of liquor to make a man go stone blind.” AHS
16. Diamonds & Gasoline
“Diamonds & Gasoline,” the title track of the group’s 2010 breakthrough album, is one of the sweetest, laid back and stripped-down songs ever written by Evan Felker. It tells of a love that’s pure, but the narrator doesn’t know if he’s good enough for the girl of his dreams but would do anything to make it work out if he could just get out of his own head. It’s pretty much just Felker with a guitar but it’s lovely in its simplicity. JS
15. Blue Star
This fast-paced song chronicles the joy loved ones feel about a man coming back from war and ending his military service. It must be hard to hang it up – though we don’t hear it from the military man himself in the song – but it’s clear from lyrics like “We all know just who you are / Put your saber on the shelf / And we’ll take down the ole blue star.” Military families often hang a blue star on their doors while a relative is serving. It’s a unique spin on a military song, one that’s a little more celebratory than sad. AHS
14. Easton & Main
On a song like “Easton & Main,” originally released on the band’s 2007 debut Bossier City and re-cut for their 2015 self-titled album, you want to hear that mournful fiddle. It’s about a man who has left his heart in Tulsa, on the Cain’s Ballroom floor where he met the love of his life. This country boy has high hopes to win her heart, but it’s never known if he actually does. It’s kind of a love letter to Cain’s Ballroom, a popular venue in Tulsa, Okla. AHS
13. Pay No Rent
“Pay Not Rent,” off the band’s most recent album A Long Way from Your Heart (2017), is a tribute to Evan Felker’s aunt Lou Johnson, who ran the Rocky Road Tavern in Okemah, Okla., Felker’s hometown where he moved back to in 2012. The song, co-written with songwriter buddy John Fullbright, is a terrific gift to a woman who touched so many lives – Felker wrote it the night before her funeral to play at the ceremony. JS
12. Kansas City Southern
“Kansas City Southern,” off Diamonds & Gasoline (2010), is one of my absolute favorite Turnpike songs to hear live. The song, written by bassist R.C. Edwards, tells of all the girls who got away from the narrator in a really fun, propulsive way that demands you dance along to it. The song is one of my favorite Turnpike choruses and features terrific guitar playing from Ryan Engleman and fiddle from Kyle Nix. I’m a bit bummed it ranked so low on Aprille’s personal list that it couldn’t crack the top 10 – but I know she feels the same about my ranking of “The Bird Hunters.” JS
11. Whole Damn Town
It would really be hard to live in a small town with your ex. Brutal in every way, especially if that ex is popular, out and about in the same haunts you like to go. Evan Felker paints that picture in “Whole Damn Town,” on Diamonds & Gasoline (2010), particularly his heartbreaking almost kind of screech on the lyrics, “Well, your worn-out favorite pair of jeans / Oh, I remember everything.” It’s the only point of the song he kind of switches his tone and it’s done beautifully. AHS
10. Wrecked
“Wrecked,” off Goodbye Normal Street (2012), is a fun heartbreak songs. It plays back the downfall of a relationship that blossomed as teenagers until life got in the way. It talks about how despite the “love or fight” nature of their love, the narrator was still “blindsided in plain sight.” It’s a song for anyone who has that heartbreak where one person screwed up and wrecked it all. AHS
9. The Funeral
I think “The Funeral,” off Diamonds & Gasoline (2010), might be the Turnpike Troubadours’ best story song – which is saying an awful lot. It’s a perfect short story set to music and expertly crafted by Evan Felker and Mike McClure (who produced the album) with excellent symbolism and scenery. It tells the story of a family black sheep who returns to his hometown for his daddy’s funeral. Personally, I think it’s a top-three song for Turnpike – but my better half doesn’t seem to dig it as much as I do, hence it barely cracking the top 10. JS
8. A Tornado Warning
“A Tornado Warning,” off A Long Way from Your Heart (2017), is my favorite track off the group’s most recent album. Not to sound like a broken record, but the vivid imagery in Evan Felker’s songwriting is the true highlight here with lines like: “you ran out to roll your window up/light rain falling on your hair/your tan legs checkered from a folding chair.” It’s such a common thing, but the kind you rarely see captured in song. The guitar solo by Ryan Engleman and the fiddle playing by Kyle Nix are among the best from both throughout their tenure in the band.
7. Gin, Smoke, Lies
The cheating song is pretty much the quintessential country song. Bonus points if the artist can make it lyrically unique. It’s honestly a tough task. But “Gin, Smoke & Lies,” off Goodbye Normal Street (2012), meets that high bar with the narrator singing about how all he smells is cheap perfume “and gin and smoke and lies.” He’s pretty much done, but wants to know the truth, so the angry pleading in the chorus of “Well if you’ve been true / You better look me in the eyes” captures it well. Not going to lie – the Evan Felker/Miranda Lambert affair kind of makes the song a bit awkward now. But not every song has to be biographical, so I’ll still love it for what it is, ignoring that reality. AHS
6. Before the Devil Knows We’re Dead
“Before the Devil Knows Your We’re Dead,” off Goodbye Normal Street (2012), is one of my favorite Turnpike Troubadours songs to see the band perform live. It’s one of their most raucous recordings and the “devil may care live life to its fullest” theme really hits hard, especially in a smaller venue among like-minded music lovers before the group rightfully blew up following their hiatus. JS
5. The Bird Hunters
"The Bird Hunters,” the lead track off the band’s 2015 self-titled album, is my personal favorite Turnpike Troubadours song. And it proves how much of a writing genius Evan Felker is because the song is on the surface about hunting and I’ve never been hunting – nor do I care to go. At a deeper level, the song is about performing the task at hand when your mind is absolutely in another place. In this story, it’s the narrator and his childhood friend Danny on a hunting trip, his friend’s way of helping him get over his breakup. Felker does such a good job setting a scene and diving right into the human condition with lines like, “With my hands around a Belgian made Browning / My mind on the lines of her face.” There’s lost love, loss of self with a shot of hope at the end – literally. Shooting the bird at the moment where he remembers his ex will be home on the Fourth of July, betting they’ll dance together. It’s a beautiful, heartbreaking song. AHS
4. The Mercury
“The Mercury,” off the band’s self-titled 2015 album, takes place in a dingy bar, with the familiar character Lorrie who captured the attention and admiration of both the narrator and a man named Jimmy. Lead singer Evan Felker is pure genius when it comes to descriptive lyrics. We know exactly who these characters are with lines like, “Lorrie laughs like she just don’t care / Got a red bandana in her raven hair” and Jimmy, “Hayseed dressed up like James Dean.” As for the narrator, he’s in it to win Lorrie’s heart. The song plays out with the intensity of a bar scene with lyrics like “Her kind of loving is a little like a fist fight” and “Well it’s throwback punks and daytime drunks / And PBR’s and stouts.” In the end, it seems the narrator wins her heart. The song is sexy, it’s gritty and it’s a lyrical tapestry of a dive bar. AHS
3. Every Girl
There’s a good chance the first Turnpike Troubadours song you ever heard was “Every Girl,” the first track of their 2010 release Diamonds & Gasoline, which while it wasn’t the band’s first album was the first to really see traction and set them out on a path to become perhaps the gold standard of red dirt country music acts. Co-written by Evan Felker and John Fullbright, who spent a short amount of time in the band at its inception before setting out on a Grammy-nominated career of his own, the song is beautiful in its descriptions of all the things the narrator’s love interest reminds him of. JS
2. 7 & 7
“7&7,” from Diamonds & Gasoline (2010), is my personal favorite Turnpike Troubadours song – it averages out at No. 2 overall on the list. “7&7” just puts me in a nostalgic state of mind where I may not have lived the life Evan Felker’s narrator does in the song, but I still identify with the “I had no clue I’d be the boy who your mama warned you about” lyric. I love the imagery of bumping into your old flame at a grocery store and seeing how much they’ve changed and you feeling like the same old kid you used to be. It’s a devastating story but also somehow life-affirming in the end as if he’s ultimately saying, “no regrets.” JS
1. Good Lord Lorrie
“Good Lord Lorrie,” off Goodbye Normal Street (2012), is our No. 1 Turnpike Troubadours song. Both Aprille and I had it ranked as No. 2 on our individual lists, which allowed it to average out into the No. 1 spot overall. I think in many of Evan Felker’s best songs there’s this fast-burning, ill-fated romance at the center of them and “Good Lord Lorrie” is perhaps the best example of this theme. Lorrie and our narrator feel like a perfect fit amidst all the reasons that say they shouldn’t be together and ultimately will see that they don’t wind up together. I love the vivid description of the lyrics like how “De Queen is dry so I bought us both a bottle in downtown Broken Bow.” Images like this show how Felker could’ve been a great novelist had he not been a songwriter. The simplistic chorus of “Good lord Lorrie, I love you, could it go more wrong” repeated is one you can’t help but shout at the top of your lungs when seeing the band live in concert. JS
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