Nikki Lane will release her anticipated third album, Highway Queen, via New West Records on February 17th, 2017. The 10-song set sees the young Nashville rebel emerge as one of Outlaw Country and rock’s most gifted songwriters and was co-produced by Lane and fellow singer-songwriter Jonathan Tyler. Recorded in Denton, TX at Matt Pence’s Echo Lab Studio as well as Club Roar in Nashville, TN with Collin Dupuis, Highway Queen features the Texas Gentlemen as her band and blends potent lyrics, unbridled blues guitars and vintage Sixties country-pop swagger. Th video for the album’s title track premiered today, which can be seen below…
With Highway Queen, 2017 is poised to be Lane’s major mainstream breakthrough. The album is a journey through heartbreak that takes exquisite turns. It begins with a whiskey-soaked homage to Lane’s hometown (“700,000 Rednecks”) and ends on the profoundly raw “Forever Lasts Forever,” where Lane belts freely, mourning a failed marriage – the “lighter shade of skin” left behind from her wedding ring. Elsewhere, “Companion” is pure Everly Brothers dreaminess – “I would spend a lifetime, playing catch you if I can.” She goes on a Vegas bender on the rollicking “Jackpot,” fights last-call blues on “Foolish Heart” and tosses off brazen one-liners at a backroom piano on “Big Mouth.” “Love is the most unavoidable thing in the world,” Lane says. “The person you pick could be half set-up to destroy your life with their own habits — I’ve certainly experienced that before and taken way too long to get out of that mistake.”
Lane, a Greenville, South Carolina native is also a fashion entrepreneur as the owner of the popular vintage clothing boutique High Class Hillbilly. She has lived – and been heartbroken in – Los Angeles, New York and Nashville, so it’s no surprise that her music seamlessly crosses musical genres with lyrics steeped in the doomed perseverance only a true dark horse romantic knows. Like a true wanderer, her sound crisscrosses musical genres with ease, while the lonesome romantic in her remains.
Lane has announced a performance at the Stagecoach Festival in Indio, CA on Saturday, April 29th, 2017 with more live dates in support of Highway Queen to be announced soon.
