Into The Music
Luke Grimes’ sophomore album Redbird is out April 3, produced by Dave Cobb at Georgia May Studio in Savannah and RCA Studio A in Nashville. The Yellowstone actor turned country artist has been building his music career at a deliberate pace since his debut, and Redbird is the record that will establish whether he has staying power beyond the celebrity association.
The choice of Dave Cobb as producer is the strongest signal yet of his intentions. Cobb has worked with Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell, and Brandi Carlile, and his production aesthetic is consistent: warm, organic, vocal-forward, built around live performance rather than layered construction. Artists choose him when they want their work to sound like it was made by people in a room rather than assembled from parts.
Grimes’ warm baritone and the stripped-down clarity of his writing are genuine, which is not a given for actors who pivot to music. He co-wrote most of the album’s ten tracks and played acoustic guitar and percussion during the sessions. The songs draw on Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Waylon Jennings as touchstones, which is either sincere or calculated depending on how the record lands.
Redbird is out April 3 on Range Music/MCA Nashville.
Dave Cobb is a very deliberate choice , his work with Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell established a template for stripping country back to something that feels recorded rather than produced. The Yellowstone connection will bring in a casual audience but the Cobb credit signals this is meant to be taken seriously on its own musical terms. Curious whether Grimes leans into the actor-turned-musician skepticism or just ignores it and lets the record speak.
Yellowstone lad making country records with a proper Nashville producer, fair play to him for not just dropping a vanity project. Still gonna need to hear it before I’m convinced though innit.
RCA Studio A and Georgia May in the same record. He’s doing everything right on paper.
There’s something that gets me about an actor making a record in a studio with this much history , RCA Studio A has Elvis and Dolly and Willie Nelson in its walls, and Georgia May has become its own kind of sacred space. I don’t know Luke Grimes’ music yet but the choice to record somewhere with that kind of weight, with Dave Cobb who clearly cares about honesty over gloss, suggests this isn’t a vanity project. I’ll listen hoping it’s real.