“People say I need a viral moment,” Tannery Usrey says. “But you know what? That moment happens every time I write a new song, and every time I step onstage. If you chase that viral moment, it’ll eat you to death.”
For a decade, Usrey has toured relentlessly, with the music and hard-partying appeal to sustain a career playing clubs and dance halls in his native Texas. Then, one of his songs, “The Light,” appeared on Yellowstone in 2022, and Usrey landed a deal with Atlantic, releasing his 2023 debut album, Crossing Lines, in the wake. Suddenly, Usrey felt as though he was on the cusp of a breakthrough and became hellbent on making the most of the opportunity.
He does that on These Days, his second album, released on Friday. It’s a record that finds him assessing not just his songs, but his entire approach to music and touring — on These Days, Usrey grows up, fast.
“It’s about heartbreak, as usual, but the overall theme is more mature than what I’ve been writing about,” Usrey tells Rolling Stone. “It’s about counting the little wins, and that’s why I named it These Days. I want to appreciate every little moment, and every day that I make it through, and everybody else makes it through. It’s not all self-destruction anymore, it’s about real stuff.”
Usrey’s voice was what first endeared him to Texas crowds in the early 2010s, when he played acoustic shows with his older brother, Tim. He can sing with a country twang or hold a long blues note, and do both with his extensive vocal range. For These Days, Usrey wanted to showcase all that, which led him to tap Dave Cobb to produce.
“I think my voice shows on the record,” Usrey says. “[Cobb is] amazing at capturing voices, and I don’t think I’ve had anything like this yet. I needed to remind everybody else, and myself, ‘Hey, you can sing.’”
Usrey was raised on country music but eventually found himself drawn to the songwriting of the Texas and Red Dirt scenes, particularly the raw honesty in the lyrics of Cross Canadian Ragweed, Wade Bowen, and the Randy Rogers Band. He internalized that honestly, writing a string of songs that reflects his life experiences or state of mind. These Days is the distillation of years of Usrey refining that approach.
On the track “Better Weather,” Usrey laments a relationship undone by toxicity, repeating the refrain, “I’m prayin’ for better weather” as though trying to convince himself he’s put the relationship behind him.
“I was thinking about the person that got away,” he recalls. “You self-destruct out of a relationship but you still hope that they’re happy. You lie to them, and you tell them, ‘I’m good!’ but you still hope that they get the dream that they wanted.”
Meanwhile, “Do It to Myself” finds Usrey reckoning with the maturity he was searching for on this album. The song was written while he and Cobb were recording and Usrey caught himself partying just a little too hard.
“I got the idea while we were in the studio in Savannah,” he says. “Me and [drummer] Chris Powell, the night before, we’d drank about two bottles of tequila, just talking with each other. The next day, Dave says, ‘Let’s go out on a boat!’ I was seeing double. It felt like I was looking through 3-D glasses. And I was like, ‘Man, I guess I fucking do it to myself.’”
To lean further into personal introspection, Usrey collaborated with songwriters like Aaron Raitiere, Raina Wallace (formerly of the Lowdown Drifters), and Cobb himself — all writers who have embraced a personal worldview in their writing.
“I’ve been reading the Rick Rubin book The Creative Act,” Usrey says. “I read that you have to take in everything around you. I’ll be sitting at a restaurant, and I’ll overhear somebody talking, and I’ll take that story in. And I’ll take in myself, and what I’m going through, and what my friends and my family are going through.”
In the end, however, Usrey still sees writing and recording new songs as an opportunity to expand his high-energy live show. He is currently in the midst of a short run with Cody Jinks, winning over some of the “Hippies and Cowboys” singer’s fans in the process. He also has fall dates on the books opening for Ella Langley, his duet partner on 2023’s “Beautiful Lies.”
But the latter half of 2025 will feature Usrey on his own headlining Bad Love Tour, named after a song on These Days. He’ll hit venues like Bowery Ballroom in New York and the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, and is also on the bill of ACL Fest in Austin.
Usrey describes himself as a “road dog” who’d still be playing 200 dates a year if his team would let him, but he says for all the excitement of releasing a new record, the payoff — for him — happens when he’s onstage.
“I just want people to think it’s the best show they’ve been to,” Usrey says. “It sounds cocky, but that’s what I want: ‘Damn, that band’s fucking tight. He can sing.’”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose latest books, Never Say Never and Red Dirt Unplugged are available via Back Lounge Publishing.