One album is marking a milestone: its 10th anniversary. Another, a collection of new Americana roots songs that celebrates enduring bonds among people and the memories and music they share, is brand new.
Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors decided to put both folk-infused albums in the spotlight on the band’s “Medicine Anniversary Tour” not only to respect a meaningful music journey over time, but also to pay tribute to ties that bind, ride-or-die relationships and people who simply fill us with joy. If you’re the kind of fan who can’t help singing back to the band, yes, that means you.
“What I hope is it is sort of an honoring of our fans,” Holcomb told The Daily Progress. “I hope people walk away feeling they’ve had a different experience than they’ve had with us before.”
Holcomb said that planning the tour to mark the 10th anniversary of the release of “Medicine” meant heading back to the places where the band first introduced the tunes to fans in 2015. Those include Charlottesville, where the band will perform Sunday at the Jefferson Theater, as well as Athens, Georgia, and Asheville and Wilmington, North Carolina. All net profits from Asheville’s show will be supporting ongoing relief efforts there after Hurricane Helene.
“That’s one of the beautiful things about music,” Holcomb said. “It takes you back to a time and a place.”
“Medicine,” the group’s seventh album, made its debut at No. 47 on the Billboard 200 and No. 12 on the rock albums chart.
Since the Neighbors have been performing songs from “Medicine,” the musicians have welcomed, and weathered, many of life’s changes.
“I had one kid when ‘Medicine’ came out,” Holcomb said. “I have three now.”
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Guitarist Nathan Dugger and bassist Rich Brinsfield have been with the band since its founding in 2006. Bandmate Ellie Holcomb, Holcomb’s wife, stepped back from touring after their first child was born in 2012 and has stayed busy as a children’s book author and Christian singer. The Holcombs released their first album together, “Memory Bank,” earlier this year.
The “new” members of the band, drummer Will Sayles and keyboard player Ian Miller, have been Neighbors for seven years.
“This version of the band has been together the longest,” Holcomb said. “This record has become theirs over the years.”
The Neighbors’ new collection is “Strangers No More Volume II,” a follow-up to 2023’s “Strangers No More” that features collaborations with friends Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show, Natalie Hemby and Vince Gill. The songs, which include “Dance with Everybody” and “Find Your People,” touch on “friendship, and getting older,” along with the inevitable losses and relationship changes the passage of time brings.
Holcomb said he met Gill at the Grand Ole Opry and deepened the connection during some charity golf tournaments. Gill can be heard on “Green Light,” the opening track on “Strangers No More Volume II” and the one Holcomb calls “the closest to true country.”
“He has become a friend over the years,” Holcomb said. “We sort of pinched ourselves while we watched a legend and a hero of ours play guitar and sing in the studio.”
Bringing “Medicine” and the new collection together on stage is uniting fans who’ve discovered the band at different moments over the past two decades.
“The way we balance the two is [to] have two sets and don’t have an opener,” Holcomb said. “We’ve always integrated songs from different eras. We know that every fan typically has come from a different era.”
This time, the band decided, “let’s do a set where we play the album all the way through,” Holcomb said. That means another milestone, and this one’s for the fans.
“There will be one song that we haven’t played live: ‘The Last Thing We Do,'” Holcomb said. “It’ll be the first time we’ve played it live.”
Jane Dunlap Sathe (434) 978-7249
jsathe@dailyprogress.com
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