Futurebirds bring their Far Out Country back to Fort Worth
Futurebirds have spent the better part of two decades making Southern rock feel less like a fixed genre and more like something that can stretch in whatever direction they need it to.
– JAMBALOO EDITORIAL TEAM
On December 5, the Athens, Georgia band return to Fort Worth for a night at Tulips, part of a late-year run through the South behind their sprawling new record Far Out Country I & II.
Built around the three distinct songwriting voices of Carter King, Daniel Womack and Thomas Johnson, Futurebirds have always been difficult to reduce to a single reference point. There is country music in there, certainly, but also psychedelic rock, indie rock, folk and the kind of extended live playing that has turned the band’s audience into its own traveling community. Fifteen-plus years into the project, that looseness has become one of its defining strengths.
The new Far Out Country pushes that idea further. The 18-song double album is deliberately divided into two halves, with the first leaning toward the brighter, more restless side of the band and the second moving somewhere darker and more inward.
Produced largely with Brad Cook — whose recent credits include Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman — it’s another example of Futurebirds finding room to change without abandoning what people came to them for in the first place.
That should translate particularly well at Tulips. Futurebirds are a band whose records have always felt partly like preparation for what happens onstage, where songs have room to open up, guitars start talking to each other and a fairly traditional-looking rock band can suddenly sound much stranger than expected.
