Kevin Gordon’s Louisiana is a strange place. In his songs, it’s a place where restless teens road trip to where the highway dead-ends at the Gulf of Mexico; a place where prisoners who are in for life compete in a rodeo in front of spectators; where a man can get lost in the humid afternoon and where religion may not signify hope; where the KKK greets a high school marching band and its African-American teacher along a parade route; where a post-ZZ Top show hang out outside a McDonald’s reveals a hidden gun; where a Pontiac GTO gets stolen, ends up in a lake, and punishment takes precedence over remuneration; where half Comanche folksinger Brownie Ford can escape death and proffer advice on staying real and free; where Jimmy Reed is the true king of rock and roll; and where rivers, never far away, carry secrets behind levees.
The kicker? All of these songs are based on true stories. Kevin Gordon has been exploring Louisiana for twenty years now, on the eve of the release of his powerful new album Tilt & Shine, out July 27, 2018 on Crowville Media.
Before you even hear Kevin Gordon’s vivid lyrics, you start feeling the sound of that ’56 Gibson ES-125 tuned down to low, open D, with the tremolo flowing like a river, and an unstoppable groove distilled from swamp blues and Sun Records. It’s also a sound that comes of the four-album partnership with producer Joe McMahan (Patrick Sweany, McCrary Sisters, Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer).
Today, Ghettoblaster has the pleasure of premiering “Get It Together.” This is what Gordon had to say about it:
“[This is] the newest song on the record, we tracked this in December of last year, right before the holidays. I started it while at my mom’s house in Mississippi, after my dog’s death (by cancer, not copperhead) last summer. I had been playing a version of this one when opening some shows for Todd Snider last Fall, but I felt like it needed tightening before I recorded it, so Gwil and I worked on it and beat it into shape. A song about what seems to be a constant battle of adulthood—negotiating that gap between knowing what you need to do, and actually doing it. I originally heard this rendered in a more punk fashion, darker (“might be now, might be NEVER”), but on the record it ends up being a dang-near hopeful, positive song. A very rare thing for me!”
Enjoy it below.

Catch Gordon live:
July 27 – Nashville, TN – City Winery, Main Stage
Website