Into The Music
49 Winchester formed in Castlewood, Virginia, a small coal-country town in the far southwest corner of the state, about as far from Nashville’s commercial machinery as you can get while still being in the same universe. The band built an audience the old way: gigging relentlessly, earning it show by show across the kind of venues that don’t make the news but do make careers.
Isaac Gibson writes the songs, and they come from that place specifically. The Appalachian landscape, the coal economy, the particular mixture of pride and frustration and love that characterizes life in communities that the broader American narrative has largely decided to stop paying attention to. This is not nostalgia tourism. Gibson writes from inside, not about it from outside.
Their previous records on their own label established the sound and the audience. The major label deal with Lucille Records/MCA, announced earlier this year, creates the possibility of a much larger conversation. Whether the deal preserves what makes them worth that conversation or softens it toward commercial palatability is the question that Change of Plans will answer.
The Dave Cobb production credit is a strong indicator that the answer is yes. Cobb’s track record with artists in similar positions, artists who have genuine roots and genuine voices and need a producer who will serve those qualities rather than polish them away, is the best available evidence that this record is what it should be.
49 Winchester is one of the more important bands in contemporary Americana, and most of the country still doesn’t know they exist. Change of Plans is the record that should fix that.
