Hear Marty Stuart’s Restless New Song ‘Whole Lotta Highway’
Marty Stuart will release his first new album since 2014’s double LP Saturday Night/Sunday Morning. On March 10th, the country traditionalist with the rock & roll flair will unveil Way Out West, a love note to the Golden State of California.
To preview the album, produced by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Stuart has released the new song “Whole Lotta Highway (With a Million Miles to Go).” Fueled by his superb longtime band the Fabulous Superlatives, the track – which nods to truck-driving anthems of old – roars out of the gate. (Listen to the song below.)
“I’ve always been a sucker for a truck driving song. It’s a true song, lived through, written from years of experience. The Superlatives and Mike Campbell played and sang their hearts out on this track,” says Stuart, summoning bluegrass guitarist Clarence White. “The scariest part for me was in the middle of my guitar solo, the ghost of Clarence White took over. At the end of the take, I had to take a walk around the building.”
Along with White, the dusty Way Out West, recorded at Campbell’s California studio and Capitol Studios in Hollywood, calls to mind Stuart influences like Merle Haggard, Marty Robbins and Johnny Cash, in whose band Stuart once played.
“I wrote hard, but Merle still has the winning truck driving song line: ‘I want to die along the highway and rot away like some old high-line pole, rest this rambling fever in my soul,'” says Stuart, paying homage to Haggard’s “Ramblin’ Fever.”
Here’s the complete track list for Way Out West:
1. Desert Prayer- Part1
2. Mojave
3. Lost On The Desert
4. Way Out West
5. El Fantasma Del Toro
6. Old Mexico
7. Time Don’t Wait
8. Quicksand
9. Air Mail Special
10. Torpedo
11. Please Don’t Say Goodbye
12. Whole Lotta Highway (With a Million Miles to Go)
13. Desert Prayer – Part 2
14. Wait For The Morning
15. Way Out West (Reprise)