THE DEAD SOUTH SHARE NEW SONG “BLUE TRASH,” A FRIENDLY WINK AT BLUEGRASS TRADITIONALISM.

September schedule includes World of Bluegrass showcases, in-stores at Rough Trade (Brooklyn) and Grimey's (Nashville).

USA SERVED COLD TOUR presented by Live Nation Ones To Watch and SiriusXM Bluegrass Junction rolls in November.

Tangy banjo and back chop beats drive “Blue Trash,” the third song from The Dead South’s forthcoming Sugar & Joy. Out today, “Blue Trash” is a playful acknowledgement that along their road from unsigned Canadian string set to Gold Certified, JUNO Award winning, Billboard charting band, some have taken issue with the prairie pickers’ progressive style. “Blue Trash,” built on a perfectly bluegrassy banjo lick, is about the importance of expressing their own musical hearts, on their own terms.

For more from Sugar & Joy, you can get weird and get friendly with “Alabama People,” a headbanging bluegrass tune released last month. Written and recorded on the spot, the song’s spontaneous origin shows a band fully in the moment, inspired by the experience and channeling the energy of place (The Nutthouse) and people (producer Jimmy Nutt, assistant engineer Cody Simmons, visits from members of The Swampers, late nights with the locals at Champy’s Shoals). Beyond its two minutes of stomping swagger, “Alabama People” also feels like a snapshot, Eggleston-style, a vivid, unsettling, evocative vignette.

As the release date for Sugar & Joy nears (October 11, 2019), The Dead South’s fall schedule includes stops in NYC, Raleigh and Nashville in September for an in-store at Rough Trade (9/24), multiple showcases at this year’s World of Bluegrass, and a stop at Grimey’s in Nashville (9/28). The band’s USA SERVED COLD tour, presented by Live Nation Ones To Watch and SiriusXM Bluegrass Junction, has also expanded to include new west coast dates.

The Dead South, a gold rush vibing four-piece acoustic bluegrass set from Saskatchewan, infuse the genre’s traditional trappings with an air of frontier recklessness, whiskey breakfasts and grizzled tin-pan showmanship. The sound, built on a taut configuration of cello, mandolin, banjo and guitar, speeds like a train past polite definitions of bluegrass into the grittier, rowdier spaces of the traditional world. The gold-certified, JUNO Award winning band’s original and current lineup includes the gnarled baritone of Nate Hilts, Scott Pringle on mandolin, whistling cellist Danny Kenyon and virtuosic banjo player Colton Crawford. The four-piece, string-driven approach puts the interplay of unique and versatile voices front and centre, with Hilts, Pringle and Kenyon all sharing lead vocal duties.

Sugar & Joy will be released on October 11, 2019 via Six Shooter Records.