The Band of Heathens have passed the two-decade mark as an independent roots-rock group and insist that their longevity is all due to never having a plan. From the outset, the band has gone where the vibes take them. “There’s been no road map,” Gordy Quist says. “It’s just been following what feels right.”
The Austin five-piece built around co-founders Quist and Ed Jurdi dropped a brand-new album, Country Sides, in February. It marks their first studio album since 2023’s Simple Things and their first project overall since the Hayes & The Heathens collaboration with Hayes Carll in 2024.
Country Sides is an 11-track LP that showcases the Heathens’ range in melody and lyrics, drawing on sounds and styles that defined their two decades as a hard-driving Americana outfit.
“A trusted friend that’s known the band a long time said to me that it feels like a greatest hits record without being a greatest hits record,” Jurdi tells Rolling Stone. “The emotional tenor of it covers the whole history of the band through the songs.”
It’s a project the Heathens self-produced in Quist’s studio, the Finishing School — the same space where Quist produced Carll’s We’re Only Human last year and where they recorded Hayes & The Heathens. Like all their albums, they released it independently.
The songs on Country Sides skew introspective and reflect the Heathens’ evolution from a side project to a career, racking up a platinum-certified single (2011’s cover of “Hurricane,” first cut by Levon Helm in 1980) along the way.
“It was kind of a career retrospective, in a weird way,” Quist says. “We didn’t set out to, literally, write a record about that. But a lot of the emotional content mirrors our 20-year journey from being young and inspired — hit the road at all costs and do 250 shows a year starting out, and finding a little bit of success as an independent band. Then realizing how hard it is and wondering how to keep digging for inspiration, and finally ending up in a good spot.”
They jumped headfirst into that notion when releasing Country Sides. The first single was “High on Our Own Supply,” a title that gives away the game. Lyrics like “Getting high on our own supply, there’s enough left to get us by/when you’re all alone and you need a song” are buoyed by a bluesy backbeat and a heavy dose of keys in such a way that you could be forgiven for thinking it was a Helm cover.
“The idea was the construction of the band, and living in the home of the music,” Jurdi says. “To use a cliche drug reference that has nothing to do with drugs, that’s what we get high on: the inspiration of new music, building songs, recording them.”
While Quist and Jurdi have been constants throughout the band’s history, this record is the first that features keyboardist Trevor Nealon, drummer Clint Simmons, and bassist Nick Jay, although those three did tour with the band after the release of Simple Things. Along with their frequent producer, Jim Vollentine, Quist and Jurdi were joined by Nealon for some modest preproduction on Country Sides, but most of the songs took shape over the course of four days in the studio.
That timeframe made it a quick recording session by Heathens standards. They often spend weeks or months producing their own work, but they went with gut instincts here. Jurdi says that’s why the sounds that have come to define the band are so prevalent on Country Sides.
“Everyone trusted each other in the studio,” he says. “There wasn’t a lot of second-guessing. A lot of first ideas were good this time. If there were a way to distill this and be able to do it this easily every time, we would do it.”
Over their career, the Band of Heathens have watched as both the business sides of rock and country have usurped the concept of “outlaw” music and turned it into a marketing tool. But that’s only caused Jurdi and Quist to double down on the moment. If they were to suddenly lay out barometers for success now, they’d be betraying the reasons they formed the band in the first place.
“Growing up at a time when rock & roll was pretty ‘fuck you,’ and it was pretty anti-establishment, it wasn’t about getting corporate sponsorships and placements or being an entertainer… it was about having a point of view, and that meant, sometimes, being difficult,” Jurdi says. “The landscape has changed in a lot of ways as far as that goes. People being outlaw or bucking the system, whatever the sentiment is. It’s weird now, because it’s playing in an echo chamber a lot of times. It’s not quite as outrageous as it might seem.”
Jurdi points to the group’s partnership with Carll, who is as fiercely independent as the Heathens.
Their 2024 collaboration and ensuing tour, which included a date opening for the Turnpike Troubadours at a sold-out Red Rocks in Colorado, was the result of two independent forces of nature coming together and realizing both sides benefitted.
“The further into it we get you have a lot of friends, but it’s rare to make a connection like that, with someone that wants to trust you and become a collaborative partner and bring you into their world,” Jurdi says. “It’s an affirmation of a lot of the work that we’ve done and a lot of the seeds we’ve planted. Those things come to fruition with Hayes. I think he’s the best songwriter of our generation.”
The Heathens will spend the spring and summer touring behind Country Sides, highlighted by April dates at the Caverns in Pelham, Tennessee, and a slot on the Grand Ole Opry.
That’s enough for the band. They make a living. They have a studio and tour bus, and they got it on their terms. As both Quist and Jurdi look ahead, they prefer to stay independent. It’s worked for the last two decades, after all.
“It’s kind of a dream in the Wow, it worked out! sort of way, but it’s also hard. Sometimes I look around and I feel we get caught up in the comparison game, where you see all these other acts waving the independent, ‘Oh, we’re outlaws. Fuck the machine!’ thing, and yet they’re on labels, and they’re deeply embedded in the machine,” Quist says, “Sometimes, I scratch my head, but it feels like we are doing this thing, and there’s certainly no complaining about it.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose book (Almost) Almost Famous is out now via Back Lounge Publishing.
