Surging Bluegrass Band Mountain Grass Unit Announce New Album
Over the last couple of years, Alabama-based up-and-coming bluegrass band Mountain Grass Unit has really been lighting the bluegrass world on fire, impressing audiences at big festivals, enjoying bigger and bigger opportunities, and generally presenting themselves the future of the genre. However, one thing they’ve been lacking is new music to match their recent evolution and growth, and represent what they do to folks who haven’t seen them on stage.
Now all of that changes as Drury Anderson (mandolin), Luke Black (guitar), Sam Wilson (bass), and Josiah Nelson (fiddle) have announced they’ve signed with Dualtone Records, and will release what they’re presenting as their debut album on August 28th called Appalachian Smoke. Luckily though, fans won’t have to wait until the end of the summer to hear new music. The announcement comes with a 3-song self-titled EP as well that includes the debut record’s title track.
Though Mountain Grass Unit is certainly influenced by jamgrass and psychedelic textures as well, similar to Billy Strings, they also remain steadfastly bluegrass. Strings once said of the band’s guitar player Luke Black (on an Instagram post by Saving Country Music, nonetheless), “Kinda rude of him to be this good honestly… luckily for me we’re on the same team.” Strings has also shouted them out as the future of bluegrass and as “killer pickers.”
The new album is produced by Vance Powell, known best for working with Chris Stapleton and Phish. The album will also feature guest appearances by flamethrowing fiddle player Michael Cleveland, Anders Beck of Greensky Bluegrass, as well as steel guitar player Karl Smakula. “We wanted the album to feel like our live show,” says Sam Wilson.
Along with the title track to the debut album, the 3-song EP also includes the song “Window for a Friend” and it’s video that are a reflection back on the band’s origin story. Drury Anderson and Kevin Black met when they were four years old, and were playing music and going to Boy Scout outings together shortly thereafter. They met bass player Sam Wilson in the Sixth Grade. Josiah Nelson has worked as an adjunct teaching bluegrass and old-time music at East Tennessee State University.
“There was such a strong musical connection between the three of them,” Nelson says. “They worked together so naturally, because they’d grown up together, and there was an obvious place for me to fit into their sound.”
The announcement of the debut album comes after Mountain Grass Unit were named the IBMA Momentum Band of the Year in 2025, and Saving Country Music’s 2025 Breakout Artist of the Year. They will make their Grand Ole Opry debut on August 26th—two days before the album release.
To pre-order/pre-save Appalachian Smoke, CLICK HERE.
TRACK LIST:
1. Earthquake
2. Homebound Troubadour
3. Appalachian Smoke
4. Wait for Me
5. Window for a Friend
6. Darkness Rollin’ In
7. Forest Mississippi
8. Suspicion
9. One Last Time
10. Eagle’s Nest
11. Take Your Time
12. Where Steamboats Go to Die
13. Another Sunday Again
June 6, 2026 @ 10:00 am
Love these guys.
Would love to hear them, live
June 6, 2026 @ 11:22 am
They are playing 20 mins up the road from me in the next month or two, but it will be at a festival where they are literally the only band I would care to see. Tickets are around $130 per person and don’t really have the budget to spend almost $300 for my wife and I to attend in order to see a single band. I’ll just have to wait until next time.
June 6, 2026 @ 12:34 pm
Wonderful news!
June 6, 2026 @ 5:01 pm
I’m excited for this. Saw them a couple months ago and it was a less of a show and more of an experience. Would love to have a studio album that lives up to it. Drury sings well enough to make it as a country singer, in addition to the pickin’, so the potential is tremendous.
June 7, 2026 @ 4:30 am
…following the bluegrass scene with a little more than just one ear for while, it’s fascinating how the ibma is steering the rejuvenation of the sub-genre rather cleverly. the awards handed out at the big world of bluegrass have been going more and more to the younger generation(s) without disregarding the almost countless icons and legends recently. bluegrass, being basically a tailor-made yet invented – and really no so old – derivative of roots music may be the field most quietly-smart managed of all of them. let’s hope mountain grass unit can be another outfit continuing the evolution in a world of bluegrass that has become increasingly lively and rich again in the last decade or so.
June 7, 2026 @ 8:13 am
“When the mountains call I start to fall in the lake of sin”
Wow. Deep.
June 8, 2026 @ 5:45 am
I saw these guys back in January and they absolutely DESTROYED their sets – I was blown away. There was a huge amount of talent standing up there on stage, and the musical chemistry they been cultivating for years was obvious. I will run to go see them again any time they’re in my neck of the woods…..