Legendary Texas-based trio The Flatlanders announced plans to release their first album of newly recorded music in more than 12 years, titled Treasure of Love. Coming to the world on July 9 via Rack’em Records/Thirty Tigers, the upcoming album includes their newly released single, “Sittin’ On Top of the World,” a well-known song by fans as one of The Flatlanders most notable show closers.
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“Sometimes you’re sitting on top of the world, the next minute you are face down on the bottom. Just like life. (And the very next minute you are at the top again),” said Butch Hancock about the single. “Because better to sit on top of it. Rather than carry it. It’s a song that once you have it in your head, you have to sing it,” added Joe Ely.
The Lubbock, Texas-based band founded in 1972 by Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock, completed Treasure of Love during COVID-19 lockdown with the help of their longtime friend and collaborator Lloyd Maines (Father of The Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines). Not realizing that they were making a record at the time, the trio toyed around in the studio, laying down raw, playful takes whenever their schedule allowed between sessions or tours.
“I like to say that this album evolved more than it was recorded,” explains Ely, who hosted the initial recording sessions and worked extensively on the tracks at his Spur Studios in Austin, Texas. “We’d been chipping away at these songs for a while without ever really finishing anything, so when lockdown started, it seemed like the perfect time to really focus on it.”
The 15 tracks on Treasure of Love revisit songs the band enjoyed playing from the early days of touring. It was only when the COVID-19 pandemic forced Ely, Gilmore, and Hancock to simultaneously clear all of their calendars that the band realized they were creating an album and had the time to finally complete it.
“A lot of groups our age are either dead or not speaking to each other anymore,” said Gilmore, “but I think part of the reason The Flatlanders are still together is that we’ve all had our own separate careers along the way. We’re all such strange individualists, but we can co-captain this ship together because every time we come back to it, we feel that same magic we felt when we first started playing together.”
Listen to “Sittin’ On Top of the World” below and pre-orderTreasure of Love here.
The Flatlanders: Treasure of Love Track List:
01) Moanin’ Of The Midnight Train
02) Long Time Gone
03) Snowin’ On Raton
04) She Smiles Like A River
05) Love Oh Love Please Come Home
06) Give My Love to Rose
07) Treasure of Love
08) Satin Shoes
09) The Ballad of Honest Sam
10) Mama Do the Kangaroo
11) She Belongs to Me
12) I Don’t Blame You
13) Mobile Blues
14) Ramblin’ Man
15) Sittin’ On Top of the World
Photo by Jay Blakesberg
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