Tulsa Turnaround

A tribute to the Tulsa Sound

I’m about to release my first album in three years. My writing process has changed a lot as I get further into my career so the songs don’t come as frequently as they used to, but they come with a lot more intent. And this record was intentional.

I’ll talk more about the album as a whole when it gets closer to release date (June 5), but last week I released the first single, which also happens to be the title track for the record. And this song gives you a really good idea of what we were going for with this one.

I’ve always been a fan of the Tulsa Sound. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt something different when I heard songs with a certain sparseness and laid back groove. The kind of groove that wasn’t in your face but sucked you in. The kind that pulled you in deep and wouldn’t let go. I remember feeling that when I was a kid and heard the Timepieces album by Eric Clapton, which was a greatest hits collection from that era of his career. Songs like After Midnight, Cocaine, Lay Down Sally... hell, everything on that record really. Then I started reading liner notes. I assumed that Eric Clapton wrote all of his songs, but I saw the name JJ Cale on two of them. That got me interested. I started diving into JJ hardcore, and that’s when I realized it. This was the source. This was ground zero for that sound. Once I figured that out I realized that Eric Clapton had taken the deep dive too. Because even the songs that he wrote during that time, like Lay Down Sally, were directly influenced by what JJ Cale was doing.

After that I started seeing it everywhere. In Don Williams songs. In Waylon songs. In Dire Straits songs. I saw how far the reach went. I think that sound has always been a part of everything I’ve done musically, even if it wasn’t intentional. I grew up around a deep Mississippi blues groove, which is dirty and in your face. And I love it. To me the Tulsa Sound is an extension of that, except more subtle and more musically diverse. Again, I’ll go deeper into this when I write about the album as a whole, because this is what the whole thing centers on. Tulsa Turnaround is the title track for a reason.

Then back in 2024 I was driving and starting to write again after making and touring the Mississippi album. (I’ve been doing most of my writing from the driver’s seat lately, singing lines into voice memos as I go down the road). I was thinking about how much of the Tulsa Sound we referenced when we were making Mississippi and I knew I wanted to write something that directly paid tribute to it. I came up with a few lines and put it away - knowing I would come back to it eventually. A few weeks later I was passing through Taos, New Mexico and was invited by Ray Wylie Hubbard to stop in and write. We had never written together before and it’s always an interesting anticipation to see how something like that is going to go. We went to lunch, talked for a while, then made our way to his back porch with guitars in hand. He asked me if I had anything I was working on and I told him about the Tulsa idea. That was all it took. It turns out that he’s as big a fan of that sound as I am and he has a long history with it. Once we started it didn’t take long. We just started talking about all things Tulsa related and writing them into a song. At the same time we also both knew that if this song ever got recorded it would have to have that sound behind it. The back beat, the half time, the syncopation, all of it. So when you’re writing that type of song, one that’s going to be as much about the instrumentation and sound as anything, you have to be careful not to get too heavy on the lyrics. It needs to feel good. That’s the point. It’s not the time to get wordy. So we started rattling off Tulsa references and making them rhyme...

JJ Cale

Leon Russell

Cain’s Ballroom

The Church Studio

Chuck Blackwell (one of the original Tulsa Sound drummers)

Steve Ripley (guitar legend)

The Gap Band - I’ve always loved this little bit about the Tulsa music scene during that time. In the early 80s there was a lot of synthesized and over produced music starting to come out. Way overdone. But every time a song by The Gap Band came on it felt different. I could hear everything. I could feel everything. Straight drums with groove all around it. So when I found out that they were from Tulsa it all made sense. They were all pulling from the same sound, just using it in different genres.

Charlie Wilson (the singer for The Gap Band who’s also had an incredible solo career)

The Mercury Lounge

This was the first song we recorded when we made this new album because we knew it would set the tone for the whole thing. Once the band came in the very first time over that drum beat I knew we were going to do something really cool.

John Fullbright produced this and he, along with all of the players on the album, are Tulsa locals and have been honing this sound their whole lives. It doesn’t get much more authentic than that. I played my part, sang my song, and let that Tulsa magic happen all around me.

I hope you have as much fun listening to the song as we had making it. I’d love to know your thoughts about it! And if you like it please share it and spread the word!

You can listen to Tulsa Turnaround anywhere you stream music…