Morgan EvansIf there was ever a time to scream-sing country songs with your arm around your best mate, it’s now because Morgan Evans is officially back.
After three years between releases, the Aussie country favourite is gearing up to drop his brand-new album Steel Town and hit the road in May for what’s shaping up to be the most electric tour of his career. And yes, he’s feeling it.
“Hey, I am feeling stoked, actually,” he says, grinning. “It's really exciting. It's been such a long time coming, but yeah, it’s happening.”
Steel Town isn’t just another album cycle. It’s a full-circle moment. Evans has previously described the record as a snapshot of a time when he needed to reset, a period that saw him return home to Australia, reflect, write and rebuild. But don’t expect just one defining track to sum it all up.
“I think there's probably 11 tracks on there for a reason,” he explains. “Deciding what songs made this record was less about what do I think the best song is and more kind of what song does its job telling this story, you know?”
The album opens with the title track Steel Town, setting the emotional tone from the jump. “They all kind of play a role,” he says. “You could just jump in at any point if you’re casually listening, or you could start at the beginning and take the whole ride.”
And what a ride it is. Closure. Healing. New beginnings. Maybe a couple of beers.
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“Yeah, definitely all of those things,” Evans says of what the album represents. “It feels really good to be able to put these songs out and kind of honour the music and the art that came from that time, but also be able to release it and speak about it and be proud of it from a place of not being there there anymore.”
“It feels really good to sort of be in this place of life that I'm at right now, but also be able to share some music that is kind of you know, heavy or painful or fun. You know, ‘how many beers are we going to drink tonight to get over it’ kind of thing.” he laughs.
That emotional rollercoaster? It’s intentional. “I feel like that kind of emotional rollercoaster of the songs on this record kind of mirror my life during that period, pretty identically, actually.”
If first single Beer Back Home is anything to go by, fans are in for something special live. The track has already proven to be a unifier, especially for Aussies who’ve left their hometowns.
“that song feels really special,” he says. “It makes you want to hold your drink up in the air and sing with your mate and put your arm around 'em and sort of get nostalgic.”
Expect it early in the setlist. “We put it out for a reason first, wanted to sort of set the scene for what's going to come, you know?”
And speaking of the setlist, for the first time, he has too many hits to fit into one show.
“This is the first time I've reached that point in my career where I have to like leave songs out that people will want to hear,” he admits. “There’s definitely going to be a lot of this new record in this tour. I mean, it's the Steel Town tour.”
But don’t stress, fan favourites like Day Drunk and Kiss Somebody are still locked in.
The May and June run across Australia and New Zealand is also levelling up sonically. “It’s the biggest band I've ever had,” he says. “This next tour we're going to have five people on stage with me. So we're adding some keys and some fiddle and um, just more of the, I don't know, ‘ear candy’ kind of instruments as well.”
And yes, Laci Kaye Booth his partner, and a powerhouse artist in her own right, will be joining him on tour and features on the album track Two Broken Hearts.
“I really love this song. I’m really proud of this song,” he says. “When she started singing on it, they all sound good, but there's some songs where she sang on, like this one and it just went to a whole new place that it wasn't before.”
Touring together for the first time? “I’m really looking forward to it,” he says. “I might just even just put up a microphone on stage with us and she can just come out and sing whenever.”
For Evans, though, there’s something uniquely powerful about bringing this tour home.
“Everywhere I play in Australia just feels like a hometown show that night. It really does,” he says. “There’s people in the audience that have been, you know, singing my music since Big Skies came out.”
There’s a lot of this album that feels like home. One of the most personal moments on Steel Town comes in Land I Love a song Evans says was born somewhere between nostalgia and open highway therapy. “Land I Love was written on a drive from my grandparents' house one Christmas,” he explains.
“I was driving from my grandparents' house in Armidale up to sort of the Byron Bay Northern Rivers area, and I was just going up there to go surfing for a little while, and I wrote that chorus on that drive up there as I was driving through the Dorrigo Mountains.”
Then there’s She Talks About Texas, which captures another pivotal chapter of his life, this time through the lens of love. “She Talks About Texas was, this is like a full track-by-track you're getting right now,” he laughs, before sharing that it was inspired by his first visit to Booth’s hometown.
“I think I'd written that chorus somewhere on the road at a soundcheck or something like that, but those verses just came after that first visit to her hometown.” It’s these snapshots of Christmas drives, mountain roads, small-town Texas, that make Steel Town feel less like a collection of songs and more like flipping through pages of Evans’ real life journal.
And if you’re wondering what lyric hits him hardest on this record?
“I think my favourite one might just be ‘forgiving you, for me’,” he says. “Just that realisation that, you know, forgiveness can be a selfish pursuit and it's okay just to let it go… And the way that that line lands in that song, and the meaning of that line is perfect for me.”
From heartbreak to hope, pub singalongs to five-piece band anthems, Steel Town feels like the sound of an artist fully back in control, creatively free and completely fired up.
The tour and album can’t come soon enough.
Tickets to the Steel Town Tour are on sale from Tuesday, February 17 at 2pm local time here.
