Album Review – 49 Winchester’s “Leavin’ This Holler”

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photo: Thomas Crabtree

#519 (Appalachian) and #577 (Country Soul) on the Country DDS.

Life can sometimes be a pill. Music helps. If you’re looking for that one album that can allow you to lose yourself in Appalachian music bliss driven home by some of the most soulful lyrics around, 49 Winchester and Leavin’ This Holler is beckoning. This band of dudes out of Russell County, Virginia have tapped into a mother lode vein of righteous music, and it is far from running out. If anything, they’re hitting their stride right here, right now with this new album, and you love to hear it.

With no filler or falter in energy for 10 straight songs, 49 Winchester sells you on the idea that they’re one of this generation’s premier country bands. This really isn’t the “sad boi country” vibe for the Tik-Tok and Instagram crowd. The writing is strong, but isn’t especially deep and ruminative so the Americana audience can stroke their chin to it. They’re simply finding the right groove, singing about what they know about—which is often life on the road—and delivering good vibes in an album hard to not hit repeat on.

Frontman Isaac Gibson has got one of those voices that can only come from birthright, and from refining his craft on back porches in the holler from a tender age. The old adage of singing the phone book applies here for sure, because you kind of don’t care what he’s singing about, as long as it’s gracing your ears. Gibson truly belongs in the conversation as one of our generation’s most gifted singers.

But it’s also the seamless package presented with the entire 49 Winchester band, and the vibe of this outfit of hometown heroes who broke out nationally that make you fall in love with them. Even as the audience swells and the opportunities get bigger—like playing the gargantuan Buckeye Country Superfest earlier this summer at Ohio Stadium—they still feel like a cohesive group of guys in a garage on Winchester Street playing for their friends and neighbors.


On Leavin’ This Holler, 49 Winchester resist messing with the recipe that has gotten them here so far. Working once again with producer Stewart Myers, they lean into their strengths, and worry about delivering great songs as opposed to shaking things up for some indefinable idea of “artistry” like some bands do once they reach their fifth album. 49 Winchester just keeps refining what they do best, though they do add in a little extra, like working with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra on one of the album’s strongest tracks, “Fast Asleep.”

If there is any stylistic shift, it’s very subtle, and goes in the direction of country. 49 Winchester has always been more country soul or Appalachian Americana as opposed to straight up country. But you hear more steel guitar in these mixes than before, and multiple tracks are more country than anything else. As Isaac Gibson sings on the song “Traveling Band,” “…playing country music’s how I make my living, and the bill ain’t gonna pay themselves.”

One concern with Leavin’ This Holler is how half of the tracks were released before the album itself. This also included some of the album’s best songs, notably two of the upbeat tracks “Hillbilly Happy” and “Tulsa,” and two of the most heartfelt songs in “Fast Asleep” and “Yearnin’ For You.” Then when you take into consideration we’ve been waiting for the album for five months after the announcement and first song, some fans won’t be hit with that Christmas morning feeling or that new car smell when removing the cellophane and giving this album a spin.

But none of this is Leavin’ This Holler’s fault. This remains a big boy, full-tilt testament to the talent of Isaac Gibson and this band of by god Virginians who find the perfect mixture of American roots influences and make something resonant to a wide range of appreciative fans.

1 3/4 Guns Up (8.2/10)

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