Sunday, Oct 1

The Troubadours are back with “A Cat in the Rain,” their first new album since 2017. And they’ve returned with the kind of ferocity that feels destined to put them right back on that long-term upward trajectory.

The earnestness is palpable. The band’s bass player, R.C. Edwards, says it’s a love song to Felker’s wife. Felker himself describes it as a message to fans who stuck with the band through difficult times, including his own fight for sobriety. It’s probably both.

But stick with them they did. The Troubadours have been touring to sold-out shows, adding dates to meet demand and bonding warmly with concert halls full of people who know every word to every song and sing them right back at the band.

That’s quite an achievement for a group that always conveyed a sense that its default venue should be a country dance hall with beer-soaked, boot-scuffed wood flooring. It’s a tribute to a red-dirt sound that was always too smart, maybe even too heartfelt to fit in neatly with some of the metrics-tested country emerging inauthentically from Nashville.

More than anything, though, it’s a sign that the Troubadours haven’t lost a step in their time away. They’re back with more of the sound that won over all those people in the first place — resilient, weathered by life’s difficulties and, ultimately, still on the rise.

– SCOTT STROUD