Corey Stevenson was somewhere between shows, the band playing close to one a day this year, scrolling his phone in the passenger seat when a stranger’s meme stopped him cold: It takes six people to carry your casket, it said. Imagine if six people lifted you up while you were still alive.
By the time he got home to Salem, South Carolina, he sat down at his kitchen table and wrote it out. The lyrics came almost on their own.
That song, “Bigger as Dust,” became the first single from Loaded 44, the Corey Stevenson Band’s new album, arriving October 17. It’s also the clearest sign of what changed for the three-year-old Southern rock trio: after years of leaning toward country, Stevenson and his bandmates finally stopped trying to fit a mold that never quite suited them.
For the first time, Stevenson, bassist Jake Keller, and drummer Lance Sweatt had complete creative freedom. Stevenson wrote all the lyrics, while the three collaborated on the music and arrangements. Loaded 44, its title borrowed from one of the tracks, became Stevenson’s shorthand for an album without filler, “completely loaded,” song for song.
The influences are unapologetically Southern, with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker, and Molly Hatchet among them, what Stevenson calls, laughing, “Southern boys that like to play a little boogie with their rock and roll.”
They recorded at Studio 101 in Woodruff, South Carolina, with producer Ian Guthrie, deliberately steering clear of a polished Nashville sound. Instead, the band kept things stripped down and centered on guitar, bass, and drums.
But beneath the rock-and-roll muscle is something more personal.
“Bigger as Dust” stayed with Stevenson because he had seen people receive an outpouring of attention at their funerals after having too little support while they were alive. The song, he says, is a reminder “to always try to be kind, no matter the situation, because you never know what somebody’s going through.”
Stevenson grew up in one-stoplight Man, West Virginia, where a hip injury pushed him away from sports and toward music instead of the coal mines. Today he lives in Salem, and the band has built a following in Western North Carolina through appearances at Groovin’ on the Green in Cashiers and Happ’s Place in Glenville.
Loaded 44 arrives on all major streaming platforms October 17, the same day the band celebrates with a 7:00 P.M. album-release show at Denver Downs Farm in Anderson. Closer to home, Stevenson returns to Happ’s Place October 14 and 21 for solo acoustic sets, with the full band taking the stage there October 30.
For Stevenson, the goal is bigger than another show. “I want them to feel like they’ve had an experience,” he says, “instead of just watching the show.”
Favorites Count: 0