Mike Richmond is the co-founder of Athens, Ga.’s Love Tractor, one of several great bands to come out of the South in 1980s that initially benefitted from—then ultimately shriveled beneath—R.E.M.’s looming college-rock shadow. Newbies should dive right in with the 2021 reissue of the group’s best album, 1989’s Themes Of Venus. It was so good, apparently, that it sent Love Tractor into hibernation not long thereafter. The band wouldn’t reappear until 2001.
Perhaps inspired by the recent surge of interest in Love Tractor’s prescient take on indie rock and the resuscitation of its back catalog, Richmond has signed to New West offshoot Strolling Bones and is prepping his first-ever solo release, Without An Audience. The album is a love letter to the Southerm mystique and all it entails—even the kudzu and Spanish moss that make an appearance on the LP’s first single, “Small Southern Towns.”
“I’m pretty familiar with the backroads of the southlands, having toured these parts—and also through regular visits to family and friends here and there,” says Richmond. “The album is a journey through the Deep South that pays tribute to Southern artists like Elvis Presley, Robert Johnson, Gram Parsons, Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner.”
We’re proud to premiere Mike Richmond’s “Small Southern Towns.” Without An Audience is out June 12.
—Hobart Rowland
