Today, Reed Turchi, the Brooklyn-based musician, producer, and poet shared a new single “Lay My Burden Down,” a resolute track that looks ahead to a time when all our earthly trials and tribulations come to an end. He’s also shared a live video of him and his band performing the new track. The song is the second to be released from Turchi’s forthcoming album World On Fire, out on May 30. Turchi also announced a number of tour dates in support of the album, including a hometown album release show at Barbes in Brooklyn, NY on May 30. Find a full list of tour dates below or visit his website. Preorder World On Fire via Bandcamp.
Listen to “Lay My Burden Down” / Watch “Lay My Burden Down” Live Video
“‘Lay My Burden Down’ asks the question ‘Watchya gonna do when the world's on fire?,’ which is the lyrics this album was born from,” explains Turchi. “That question is also what's at the core of why this album came to exist: Faced with life-threatening illness and major relationship upheaval, this song — this music — is what I turned to as my own personal worlds were set aflame. Fire is maybe the most essential thing between humans and the great beyond. It's what we stare into, it's what we uniquely learned to utilize, and it's what, of course, eventually comes for us all. When I sing this song I try to acknowledge all of that — why it matters to embrace humanity, but also to recognize the ultimate smallness of our existence. I'm going home. Lay my burden down. This song is as elemental as could be, and for now I'm just doing my best to carry the torch (in this case, from Fred McDowell's slide-playing style) to whoever and whatever comes next.”
“Lay My Burden Down” follows lead single “Get Back Train,” released last month alongside a live performance video of Turchi and his band performing the song. “‘Get Back Train’ is a song as old as sound itself—or at least recorded filaments,” Turchi told Magnet Magazine. “My version is an amalgamation of Mississippi Fred McDowell and Luther Dickinson, plus sounds and spaces of my own… We recorded ‘Get Back Train’ in the dark—the band isolated to emphasize the night around us, just like listening to those distant trains. It’s the sound of something coming around the bend or, maybe, the sound of someone coming home again.”
World On Fire is a collection of vintage blues and spiritual tunes Turchi picked up along the way on his circuitous route through the music industry. Some of the songs are traditional with no documented authors, others performed by so many artists with so many variations over the years that it’s impossible to pin down any definitive version, but on World On Fire, Turchi makes each his own with striking honesty and intimacy.
Hailed by the Oxford American as an artist “beyond genre constraints,” Turchi first became fascinated with the sound of the North Mississippi Hill Country blues as a teenager. After graduating from UNC, where he studied under former NEH chairman and esteemed folklorist William Ferris, Turchi launched a label to release albums he’d recorded by the likes of Kenny Brown and Joe Ayers. The buzz soon led him to an A&R/production gig at the legendary Ardent label and studios in Memphis, Tennessee.
“I never really felt like there was much difference between recording other artists and recording myself,” says Turchi, who would later move from Memphis to Nashville. “It was always about chasing a sound and a spirit, about trying to create an atmosphere where something real could be communicated.”
Turchi has since built his own career as an artist, earning praise everywhere from Rolling Stone to American Songwriter and touring relentlessly around the US and Europe behind a series of critically acclaimed albums. After the pandemic ground things to a halt in 2020, Turchi returned to the road in the fall of 2021, only to be derailed again, this time by a mysterious medical condition. It took over 2 years before doctors finally diagnosed Turchi with a rare form of Crohn’s Disease, they prescribed a mind-bending steroid regimen to help heal the open wounds and ulcers that had wrought havoc on his intestines. “When you lie awake from pain that many nights in a row, you start to ask yourself what really matters,” he reflects. “You start to get down to the core of the human experience and what it is you want to communicate.”
That sense of clarity is striking on World On Fire, a direct, plainspoken reflection on loneliness and isolation, on the search for comfort and connection in a world that feels colder and more uncaring by the day. “In a lot of ways, this record feels like the culmination of everything I’ve done so far,” Turchi reflects, “but it also feels like a new beginning. I can hear myself turning a corner and, for the first time, knowing who I am and where I’m headed.”
World On Fire Tracklist:
1. Walk With Me
2. When You’ve Got A Good Friend
3. Get Back Train
4. Lay My Burden Down
5. Don’t Leave Me Baby
6. Backdoor Man
7. 51 Highway
8. Someday Baby
9. Reprise
Tour Dates:
April 24 – Phoenix, AZ – Rhythm Room
April 25 – Prescott, AZ – Raven Cafe
April 26 – Prescott, AZ – The Fairweather Social Club
April 27 – Prescott, AZ – The Fairweather Social Club
April 30 – Hollywood, CA – The Hotel Cafe
May 1 – Rio Nido, CA – Rio Nido Roadhouse
May 2 – Bolinas, CA – Smiley's Saloon
May 3 – Petaluma, CA – Ernie's Tin Bar
May 30 – Brooklyn, NY – Barbes
