Drayton Farley’s latest record may throw some of his most strident fans for a loop. After spending the better part of five years releasing songs that mined the darkest corners of his soul and his Alabama roots, A Heavy Duty Heart brings a heavy dose of hope to Farley’s collection. That was by design. Farley lives, by and large, a happy existence these days, and it was time that his music reflected it.
“They’re all the songs I didn’t have before this record,” Farley tells Rolling Stone. “In terms of, like, love songs and the lighter side of life. A lot of my catalog is slower, sadder, darker. On this album, that still is there, but I realized I need to write happier songs or ones that cover a broader topic. I’m married with two kids. I’ve got a great, happy life.”
The 10-song LP dropped on Friday and marks Farley’s third studio album, and his first since 2023’s Twenty On High, which was produced by Sadler Vaden with Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit as the studio musicians. Vaden also produced A Heavy Duty Heart, but this one is all Farley and his touring band.
From the outset, the singer-songwriter is aiming for heartstrings. The first track, “Love We Mean,” is highly personal and written for his wife. His commanding vocals sing, “You’ll always be here with me, whether home, in my heart, or a dream” over a simple acoustic guitar. It means a great deal to Farley, and he wanted it to be the first song on A Heavy Duty Heart. It is also illustrative of the relationship Farley and Vaden have forged in the studio, because Vaden suggested a significant overhaul when he first heard the song.
“That was a song that I knew was good, but it was a song that I intentionally didn’t put a chorus to. It was just a bunch of verses,” Farley says. “We get in the studio, and Sadler said, ‘This is a really great song, and I can tell that it means a lot. But I feel I’m on the edge of my seat the entire time, waiting for something to happen, and it doesn’t happen.’ We stopped, and I went home from the studio and wrote the chorus that night.”
As much as Twenty On High was a high-water mark for Farley — his first full-band record and one that put him in front of the largest crowds of his career — it came with a criticism, largely confined to social media. Farley sings from a similar vocal register as Isbell. Combine that with the 400 Unit backing him up, and the idea that it sounded too much like an Isbell album took hold. Farley and Vaden are well aware.
“The first record was the first time [Farley] was ever in a real recording studio,” Vaden says. “I had the 400 Unit play on it, and the reason was that I thought they were the right people to play on it. Then the record came out, and people immediately were jumping on the ‘He sounds just like Isbell’ train. I think that’s hard for me to hear — literally hear — because I don’t think Drayton sounds like Jason. But the 400 Unit playing on it didn’t really help the case.”
Vaden says he was cognizant of that when recording A Heavy Duty Heart. “I didn’t want to stand in the way,” he says, “and I didn’t want that to happen again.”
Farley sees his new album as a chance to move past the perception of his previous collaboration with Vaden. “I was curious how it would go, having Sadler produce it and it not being the band that he tours with all the time,” Farley says. “I think you can hear the difference, but you can also hear Sadler’s production.”
Two tracks off A Heavy Duty Heart have already been featured on television. “Turn Around” appeared in the season premiere of CBS’s Sheriff County in October, while “It’s Called Doubt” found its way onto Landman two months later. The latter marked the second time this season that Farley was showcased on Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount+ series. Along with Sunny Sweeney and Dani Rose, he had a viral hit with “Touch and Go” earlier in the run. It was reminiscent of the attention his 2021 songs “Blue Collar” and “Pitchin’ Fits” received online and put Farley on the map in country music.
After a release party on Friday at Nashville’s Skinny Dennis, Farley will hit the road in support of A Heavy Duty Heart. A series of headlining full-band shows and duo shows with Farley and guitarist Jimmy Teardrop is sandwiched around five shows supporting Willie Nelson and the Family Band in the southeast. In the fall, he’ll open a pair of shows in Florida for Turnpike Troubadours and Muscadine Bloodline.
Farley will play to a wide swath of the country this year, introducing his new batch of songs to fans who discovered him via Twenty On High. “I did get lucky, and I did have a discovery moment. I had some songs do well for an unknown artist,” he says. “I’m blessed and fortunate that people listen to my music. A lot of stories aren’t like that.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose book (Almost) Almost Famous will be released April 1 via Back Lounge Publishing.
