Video Premiere: Drew Holcomb, “Tennessee” (Live)

Don’t call Drew Holcomb a homebody. He’s a road warrior, playing more than 200 shows a year with his folk-rock band, Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors. Every rootsy songwriter needs to know his roots, though, and Holcomb’s roots are in Tennessee. Lately, he’s been thinking a lot about that place.

Good Light, the band’s third album, tips a hat to Holcomb’s home. The songs were recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis, where heavyweights like James Taylor, the Allman Brothers and Bob Dylan once recorded their own classics. A similar thread runs throughout Good Light, which mixes full-throttle Americana music with an introspective singer/songwriter approach. It sounds like the South. It sounds like Tennessee.

“I have always had a deep love affair with my home state,” Holcomb explains. “I grew up in Memphis, went to college in Knoxville, and settled in Nashville. My family goes back many generations all over the state. The hot muggy summers as a kid on Cedarwood Drive climbing trees, the midnights in Fort Sanders in college sitting on the porch shooting roman candles at the street lights, and the cool October days in East Nashville over a fire with close friends. All of these things run deep in my blood. We are all a product of our upbringing in some way, and mine was rooted in this place, this state, my home: Tennessee.”

You’ll have to wait until February 26 to hear the rest of Good Light, but you can listen to an acoustic performance of “Tennessee” here. Recorded live in Holcomb’s living room, it feels like a mission statement for the entire album.