Vandoliers Throw A Nashville-Style Rager In New Video

Poking fun at the country music machine, the group is gathered around a conference table as a music exec tells the band they are “Too punk! Too much! Too loud!” Their solution? Throw a honky-tonk rager, Nashville-style, at Dee’s Cocktail Lounge. Today, the music video was featured at BrooklynVegan who praised their “most freeing, confident-sounding album yet.”

Though ‘You Can’t Party With The Lights On’ comes out swinging as a classic Vandoliers banger, the melancholy subtext makes it a ‘cry at the bar while everybody’s dancing’ kind of song. This is the latest release from the band’s fifth studio album, Life Behind Bars, which drops tomorrow on Break Maiden Records / Thirty Tigers.

The album details a journey through addiction and gender dysphoria, which has culminated in frontwoman Jenni (Gin-ee) Rose’s decision to come out as a trans woman. She recently opened up about what led to this moment in an extensive interview with Rolling Stone.

Working with Grammy-winning producer Ted Hutt (The Gaslight Anthem, Flogging Molly, Lucero), Vandoliers deliver 10 of their most vulnerable and carefully honed tracks on Life Behind Bars. “You Can’t Party With The Lights On” follows the band’s other recent singles – the tender, road-worn song ‘Your Picture‘, and the rowdy title track, which was co-written with Rose and bandmate Cory Graves, as well as Joshua Ray Walker and John Pedigo. The album may feel a little more stripped and intimate than the band’s typical raucous fare, but it’s still chock-full of upbeat and sing-a-long-ready Vandoliers classics.

Even the most melancholy Vandoliers song has a degree of exuberance and verve, full of an irrepressible energy that has led them to tour with everyone from Flogging Molly to the Turnpike Troubadours to fellow Dallas-Fort Worth natives the Old 97s. These are the songs of a fearless band hellbent on spreading joy wherever they go, a band who has made a career of pushing boundaries and taking all-comers, of making a bigger, brighter, bolder tent in a musical space that is still too often hidebound by tradition.

Vandoliers just hit the road this month for an extensive summer tour taking them to Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and more, before heading across the pond this fall to join Skinny Lister for a run of shows in Europe and the United Kingdom. See a full list of dates below, and find more info here: vandoliers.com/shows.

Life Behind Bars Tracklist
1. Dead Canary
2. Life Behind Bars
3. Your Picture
4. Bible Belt
5. Thoughts and Prayers
6. You Can’t Party With The Lights On (Feat. Joshua Ray Walker & Taylor Hunnicutt)
7. Valencia
8. Jim’s Barn
9. Evergreen
10. Dead in a Ditch

EU + UK Tour Dates Supporting Skinny Lister
November 13 – Paris, FR @ Backstage By The Mill
November 14 – Lisieux, FR @ Mosaic
November 15 – Arlon, BE @ L’Entrepot
November 16 – Oberhausen, DE @ Zentrum Altenberg
November 17 – Hamburg, DE @ Bahnhof Pauli
November 19 – Gothenburg, SWE @ Skeppet
November 20 – Oslo, NO @ Goldie
November 21 – Stockholm, SWE @ Bar Brooklyn
November 22 – Copenhagen, DK @ Stengade
November 23 – Berlin, DE @ Hole 44
November 24 – Prague, CZ @ Café v Lese
November 26 – Vienna, AT @ Arena
November 27 – Munich, DE @ Strom
November 28 – Aarau, CH @ KIFF
November 29 – Cologne, DE @ Luxor
November 30 – Utrecht, NL @ De Helling
December 2 – Antwerp, BE @ KAVKA
December 3 – Southampton, UK @ 1865
December 4 – Bristol, UK @ The Fleece
December 5 – Leicester, UK @ 02 Academy 2
December 6 – Norwich, UK @ Norwich Arts Centre
December 7 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
December 9 – Glasgow, UK @ King Tuts
December 10 – Sunderland, UK @ Independent
December 11 – Stoke-on-Trent, UK @ The Sugarmill
December 13 – London, UK @ Scala