Folks thirsty for a two-step can expect Oklahoma’s banjo- and fiddle-wielding quintet, the Turnpike Troubadours, at the Treehouse Café this Saturday in what promises to be a foot-stomping performance.
“This music, at its best, can put into words what we have been thinking for our entire lives,” frontman Evan Felker said.
“And even at its worst, it gets people drinking beer and makes people happy. Either of those is fine with me.”
The steady banjo strumming that introduces “Gin, Smoke, Lies” — the first song on their newest album “Goodbye Normal Street” — sows together a string of notes intricate to that of a lacy country dress blowing in the wheat fields of Oklahoma at dusk.
This past summer, the album, which blends roots and blues to the group’s distinctly Heartland sound, introduced the Troubadours on Billboard’s Top 200 at No. 57 and on Billboard Country Chart at No. 14.
The album title, “Goodbye Normal Street” and the group’s name (which takes after the Indian Nation Turnpike that connected the Oklahoma small towns of their adolescence) are fitting names for the sound of this collection of 11 songs that takes listeners on a complex but smooth road of emotions.
Each song tells a story of an old and new generation of American spirit. Felker’s folksy voice reminds one of the flat dusty country roads of Oklahoma and Texas with just the right amount of scratch to take you back to the yellowing grass of the end of summer. But it also captures the classic two-step of a modern love story.
Their single “Gin, Smoke, Lies” is also holding its own at No. 3 on the Texas Music Chart.
The Treehouse Café will be welcoming the folk country artists Turnpike Troubadours with Canadian country singer Corb Lund at 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 15.
Tickets for their 21-and-up performance are $25 and can be purchased through the Treehouse Café (www.treehousebainbridge.com/event/corb-lund/).