Turnpike Troubadours - The Price of Admission

After the release of 2023’s A Cat in The Rain, a second album produced by country legend Shooter Jennings finds Turnpike Troubadours more assured than ever before.

At times calling back to the cajun-leaning honkytonk days of 2010’s Diamonds & Gasoline, The Price of Admission acts as a culmination of all the best moments we’ve seen from the group’s remarkable career so far.

Introducing the album with ‘On The Red River’, the opening track acts as a thematic summation of the sentiments that lie ahead: embrace the joy, recognise the pain, remember the past and pay it all for the chance of tomorrow. Told through Evan Felker’s keen eye and penchant for nostalgic writing, a recollection of the guiding life of a father-figure sees him coming to the conclusion that “death doesn’t leave with the best part of you”.

As a six-piece, they’re more than capable of creating a sound to fill an arena, but on The Price of Admission, they’ve captured that controlled magnitude in the studio, too, confidently making the most of all the space a four-minute track can afford them. Infectious melodies combine with intricate details like the quick drum fills on ‘Forgiving You’, or Kyle Nix’s fiddle sneaking in between lines of tightly woven words on the ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia’-esque ‘The Devil Plies His Trade (Sn 6 Ep 3)’.

Having developed a passionate cult following over their career, the collectivity of shared emotion is captured on ‘Be Here’, a track that explores a communal journey towards what is likely Felker’s path towards sobriety.

With layers of harmonies singing “Oh lord the road I’m on”, the song exudes warmth, and while the album may be lacking in an immediate hit like ‘Long Hot Summer Day’ or ‘Pay No Rent’, ‘Be Here’ is destined to become a live show staple.

Moments like this are where Turnpike’s sentiments really cut deep, offering us a reminder that we’re all living along the same timeline, one where universal anxieties and struggles can be shared and where not all roads have to be travelled alone. A determined urge to embrace things as they come is woven throughout the album, but its consistency doesn’t reach a point of cliche or lose impact, instead it’s that genuine concern for people that keeps Turnpike fans returning to their stories time and time again.

While the band have explored the necessities of carrying painful memories with you as you move forward, turning a corner is embraced on the love-filled ‘Ruby Ann’. “I’ll love you til the morning if you hold me through the night,” Felker promises as he once again looks to the sunrise of tomorrow for guidance. As the album progresses, we may be getting closer to that embrace of the now, as remembering when “all that mattered was getting older” on ‘Leaving Town (Woody Guthrie Festival)’ is a lesson learned rather than a sentiment to live by.

In 11 songs, Turnpike capture the reasons why we should “hold onto the moment, like it’s heaven passing through,” The Price of Admission serving as an appreciation of the present after the struggles of the past.

It may be that “pain was the price of admission”, but only through embracing it all, good or bad, will you get a ticket to the next sunrise.

9/10

Turnpike Troubadours' 2025 project, The Price of Admission, is available everywhere now via Bossier City Records / Thirty Tigers.

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