Rayland Baxter Announces TRUE VIOLET Album, Shares "Better Man" Video
The 11-song collection was written in Tennessee and features background vocals from Tyler Ballgame.
Rayland Baxter has spent much of his career chasing clarity, but with his forthcoming album True Violet, out October 23 via ATO Records, he feels like the first time he's truly found it. His first album in more than four years, the 11-song collection captures the slow, steady metamorphosis of becoming someone new. The album was co-produced by Nick Waterhouse and Paul Butler and written during a years-long period of solitude in the hills of Tennessee where he penned more than 70 songs.
Baxter released the album opener 'Better Man,' co-written with and featuring background vocals from Tyler Ballgame, that serves as a prologue for the journey he takes throughout the album. The song arrives alongside an official video directed by Joshua Shoemaker. About the song, Baxter explains, ''Better Man' is a song about making it through the hard times and coming out the other side better than before. It's a reminder to myself that it's ok to close the book on a time in my life, as long as I remember the lessons I learned during that time.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn5pusb
'It's very personal and bloody,' Baxter says of True Violet. 'There are bruises and bite marks in these songs. Tears and enlightenment and pains of the heart.'
Baxter spent the years surrounding his 2022 album If I Were A Butterfly touring heavily while navigating difficult relationships, personal loss, and the death of his father, Bucky Baxter, a multi-instrumentalist best known for his work with Bob Dylan and as a member of Steve Earle and The Dukes whose musicianship and encouragement had shaped every previous chapter of his career. After returning to his quiet Tennessee hometown, Baxter found himself with the stillness to confront the patterns and emotions he had spent years outrunning.
'I sat in my chair alone for a year and wrote a bunch of songs, and what started off as an attempt to write a record got sideswiped by mediocre attempts I wouldn't even sing to my dog,' he recalls. 'Then, like many times over the last three years, I called my sister. We talked about life and family and love and heartache, and our individual experiences with all of that. She simply encouraged me to write about what I was feeling, something I was avoiding in the early stages of writing.'
That advice became a turning point for Baxter. From that trove of material he wrote during those quiet evenings came True Violet, a sweeping, tender, and sometimes raucous ode to reckoning and reconciliation. The album's title reflects Baxter's conception of its emotional landscape: 'the reds of anger and the blues of sadness' ultimately converge in violet, a color that represents the complexity of love, disappointment, pain, and acceptance.
These days, Baxter has a steadier hand on the sails of his life, and you can hear it in his voice as he sings about living inside a feeling for too long and the hard-won relief of finally moving beyond it. 'I was just letting it go,' he explains. 'The right people were in the room bringing the songs to life. I was observing. Feeling for the first time really steady in the process.'
Tracklist
1) Better Man
2) Up and Down a Mountain
3) Bad Love
4) Haymaker
5) What a Day My Friend
6) The Fool
7) Bolly Plateau
8) Real Bad Rut
9) Dreamin About
10) Never Do
11) Oh My Love
Tour Dates
09/18 - Napa, CA - Napa Music Hall
09/19 - Santa Cruz, CA - Moe's Alley
09/20 - Templeton, CA - Whale Rock Music Festival
09/22 - Ventura, CA - Ventura Music Hall
09/23 - Riverside, CA - Farm House Collective
09/25 - Torrey, UT - Fort Desolation Festival
Photo Credit: Rachel Deeb
Photo Credit: Rachel Deeb
