Jason Anderson prepping new album (listen to "Toll Booth" demo)

Jason Anderson is a long-running solo artist, who also led the projects Wolf Colonel and more recently Tracks, and a longtime collaborator of Tim Showalter (who used to play in Jason’s band, and who recently had Jason play on Strand of Oaks’ 2017 album Hard Love and in Strand of Oaks’ live band), and now Jason is back to releasing music under his own name for a new album. He’s making it with producer Thomas Wincek of Volcano Choir and Field Report (and formerly of Collections of Colonies of Bees), and while you wait, we’re premiering a demo of Jason’s new song “Toll Booth.” Maybe Jason was influenced by the big-sounding indie heartland rock of Hard Love (and by playing those songs on the road every night), because “Toll Booth” also sees Jason going in that direction. Making a departure from the scrappy, Replacements-y Tracks songs, “Toll Both” has shiny synths, a Big ’80s Snare, and hooks for days. If the rest of Jason’s new album follows suit, it’s gonna be an album worth hearing. Here’s what Jason has to say about the new stuff:

I spent 2017 on the road, playing guitar in Strand of Oaks. Whenever there was downtime I found myself writing, and at the end of the year realized I was sitting on this album. I’ve never been more excited to make a record, and am beyond stoked to be working with Tom. In many ways this feels like a debut. “Toll Booth” is both a hello and a goodbye—a meditation on the passage of time and the bittersweet ways in which memory works, written from the perspective of someone who can’t help but look backward even as they know they need to move on.

Listen to the new song:

https://soundcloud.com/jasonandersontheband/tollbooth/s-uyZ31