Album Review – The Turnpike Troubadours – “The Price of Admission”

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#550.7 (Red Dirt) and #510 (Traditional country) on the Country DDS.

The Turnpike Troubadours never did any time at “The Farm” in Stillwater, OK where Red Dirt was birthed. They never jet set off to Nashville to make a name for themselves like fellow Oklahoma natives Garth, Reba, or Toby. Instead they slogged it out in Tahlequah and Tulsa, on the club circuit, barely reached into theaters, tried and were only semi-successful touring to the extremities of the United States before completely imploding in the pandemic years. Then when they were reconstituted, they emerged miraculously as headliners.

What the Turnpike Troubadours have proven over time is that good songs endure, and better songs grow even better over time. Now on their 7th album if you count Bossier City, they might still feel like the newcomers to the oldtimers in Stillwater, or scrappy independent upstarts to the assessors on Music Row. Large swaths of American households might still not have a clue about them. But there’s no mistaking it. The Turnpike Troubadours are now legends.

The band’s new album The Price of Admission is distinctly a Turnpike Troubadours album, but with some new, interesting, and perhaps unexpected textures. As their second album with producer Shooter Jennings, it finds the band starting off quiet, thoughtful, and pensive, but then getting more loud and rowdy in the second act. This might present a challenge to some in the first few listens. If there is any criticism for the album overall, it would be the track sequencing, which the audiophiles out there will concur has become a systemic issue.

But just like every Turnpike Troubadours song, album, and era does, patient listening pays off as the depth of the lyricism slowly reveals itself, and the melodies nestle into the comfy recesses of your gray matter. The fact that a Troubadours song doesn’t always reel you in automatically is what also graces it with the gift of longevity. This is why no matter how old a Turnpike song is, in the right moment and frame of mind, it can still impart to you that first time feeling.

Maybe most important to note, The Price of Admission is a surprisingly twangy and country affair. This isn’t relevant to all the tracks. But multiple times when listening, you’re surprised at just how honky tonk the sound is. The root of the Turnpike experience is the rock ‘n roll growl of Ryan Engleman’s guitar, balanced by the fiddle bow of Kyle Nix. But here, hot steel guitar solos from Hammerin’ Hank Early burst through the mix, while Engleman explores the more woody, earthen tones of his Telecaster.

Still some will kvetch that the band hasn’t been the same since Wes Sharon ceased producing, because that’s what you do when a big name producer slips behind the mixing board. But where their previous, return album A Cat in the Rain might have been a little too blended and sedate, and might have needed a newer song or two near the end, The Price of Admission feels like the more full-bodied effort with bolder textures that will burrow beneath beneath your skin until it infects your bones in extended releases of joy.

8.5/10

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Physical copies are not currently available. To stream/download, CLICK HERE.

Song Reviews:



1. On The Red River (Evan Felker, Ketch Secor)

There’s no warm up with The Price of Admission. Evan Felker starts off by aiming straight at your ventricles, and offering up perhaps the album’s most emotional and poetic moment right off the bat.

It’s been said before that it’s the hunting songs of the Turnpike Troubadours where they make the deepest impact, with previous songs “The Bird Hunters” and “The Rut” being State’s evidence #1 and #2. But really these aren’t hunting songs at all. They’re about the strength of family bonds, and how the rhythms of life like the onset of hunting season allow the realizations of these bonds to rise to the front of consciousness.

It’s fair to say that starting the album with “On The Red River” challenges the audience though. It’s a rather slow song that takes attentive listening to digest, with a melody that’s subtle and slow to develop.


2. Searching For a Light (Evan Felker, John Fullbright)

If you’ve always been a lukewarm Turnpike Troubadours fan from wishing they would veer a little more towards the country side of the Red Dirt spectrum, this album is going to end up in your Goldilocks zone, and it will start with “Searching For a Light.” The twin lines from the steel and Tele are reminiscent of early ’70s Bakersfield country, and the sound fits the solid writing from Felker and former Troubadour John Fullbright. Then when Kyle Nix comes in with his fiddle solo, it checks off all the boxes on the requisite list of Country Gold.

3. Forgiving You (Evan Felker)

Even after multiple listens, this is a hard song to assess. It feels very personal to Felker, but the narrative thread is a bit hard to find the end or the beginning of, while the music doesn’t really pick up any slack. It’s not a bad song by any stretch, but one that might take multiple revisits to ferret out its appeal and theme.

4. Be Here (Evan Felker)

An interesting, unique track with an old Irish pub/folk feel, which isn’t entirely foreign territory from the Troubadours, and one they can pull off with the instrumentation of fiddler Kyle Nix, and accordion from Hank Early. With the call and response, this will be an interesting one to see how it’s rendered live, and how audiences interact with it.

5. Heaven Passing Through (Evan Felker)

Definitely a candidate for the best song on the record, with exquisite writing by Felker, and a deep-sinking lyrical hook bolstering the chorus. Coming out of the first half of the album where big melodies are hard to find, this song sounds so sweet, and delivers everything you want from a Turnpike Troubadours track.

For those that love to go looking for new references to the “Lorrie” saga of Evan Felker songwriting, they might think they have some clues in this one, like the reference to working a late shift at the nursing home, or washing X’s off your hands. That specificity seems to speak to something deeper.

But “Heaven Passing Through” might just be a song about gratefulness and the beauty of moments that employs a multi-generational perspective to its timeline. Either way, it’s a great song.


6. The Devil Plies His Trade (Sn6 Ep3) (Evan Felker, Kyle Nix)

We wondering when the songwriting tendencies of Kyle Nix might creep into the Turnpike Troubadours proper after he launched his side project The 38’s during the band’s hiatus. “The Devil Plies His Trade” is one of two Nix contributions, but with Felker still co-writing and singing lead. It’s the album’s angry and gritty up-tempo change in the same vein of “Before The Devil Knows Were Dead” and “Doreen” that some felt that last Turnpike album was missing. It’s a boot-stomping good time, but don’t overlook the slick writing from Nix and Felker.

7. A Lie Agreed Upon (Evan Felker)

This is a riddle of a song that gives the audience something to unravel in the complicated world of a relationship seeking truth from fiction. Meanwhile, the steel guitar texturing really underscores the extra country nature of this record.

8. Ruby Ann (RC Edwards, Lance Roark)

Nothing super fancy here, just a classic Turnpike Troubadours country rock heater than you can’t wait to hear live. This track shows off the songwriting chops of bass player RC Edwards and fast-rising Oklahoma songwriter Lance Roark, and probably better so than their “Chipping Mill” contribution to the last Turnpike record.


9. What Was Advertised (Evan Felker)

A classic Turnpike Troubadours tune her, leaning into what they do best. Probably not the strongest track on the album, but one where the melody is immediate and familiar.

10. Leaving Town (Woody Guthrie Festival) (Evan Felker, Dave Simonett)

What’s always been cool about the Turnpike Troubadours is how their songs are always so present with a sense of place. There’s so much rich history to pull from in northeast Oklahoma, especially when it comes to songwriting. Woody Guthrie was from Okemah. The Bob Dylan Museum isn’t in Greenwich Village or Minnesota, it’s in Tulsa. All of this has heavily influenced the development of Red Dirt, and the songwriting of Evan Felker.

“Leaving Town” is a classic Turnpike Troubadours tune that explores the classic dichotomy of wanting to leave your home when growing up, but growing up to see the value of it over time.

11. Nothing You Can Do (Kyle Nix)

Another welcomed country music heater with great guitar and steel play, and a great way to end the record. Evan Felker is a generational songwriter in the vein of all the past songwriting greats that just happens to front a Red Dirt band. But he’s never been prolific, and doesn’t need to try to be. He writes from inspiration, not perspiration. Adding fiddle player Kyle Nix along with RC Edwards’ contributions is what could give Turnpike albums that push to follow through a full track list with quality material, like The Price of Admission does.



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