After more than two decades, Eli Young Band is finally having a full-circle moment.
The four-piece released Strange Hours, its seventh studio album, on Aug. 1 and the project marks the group’s return to independent music for the first time since their 2005 debut, Level. It made sense, then, that EYB found their way back to Panhandle House studio in Denton, Texas, where the group was founded, to lay down Strange Hours and reconnect with its independent roots.
Part of a wave of artists to make the leap from the Texas music circuit into the mainstream country lexicon in the early 2010s — and arguably the most successful — EYB’s major-label run, first with Universal South and later Republic and Big Machine’s Valory Machine Co., brought about four Number One singles and a platinum album (2011’s Life at Best). The group credits the wake of its 2022 record, Love Talking, as laying the groundwork for their return to independent status. The 13-track Strange Hours, entirely written or co-written by EYB members, resulted from a prolific songwriting period that ensued.
“We were writing a bunch of songs,” Mike Eli, guitarist and frontman for EYB, tells Rolling Stone. “We obviously had time off during 2020 and 2021, and it was a huge creative time for us. We had made a record then called Love Talking, but we kept writing and kept the momentum going. After Love Talking, we made the decision that we were going to move on. Nothing against Big Machine — they worked really hard for us for a really long time, but we decided that it was time for us to go independent again.
The four-piece, with a lineup — Eli, James Young, Jon Jones, and Chris Thompson — that has not changed since its founding, sees Strange Hours as a slice-of-life record that emphasizes the raw, rock-edged sound and straightforward lyrics that first helped the group gain appeal among Lone Star State college audiences. This time around, though, the members have an appreciation for the freedom an unattached group is afforded.
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They point to “Whiskey Told Ya,” the single they dropped along with the album, and duet with Corey Kent, as the current example of such freedom. After declining to feature guest artists on prior records — “There’s already four of us,’”Jones says — they were swayed when the defiant song and its hook of “Don’t blame me for what the whiskey told ya” began taking shape.
“We’d been buddies with Corey for a while,” Eli says. “Doing features and having folks come in on a record, that’s just never been our thing. But ‘Whiskey Told Ya’ just felt like the right song. We asked Corey if he’d be down with it, and he called right away and said, ‘I’m in.’ He had been out on the road with us a few years ago, and we knew that his voice would blend well with our sound and with my voice.”
Jones says Kent’s raspy pipes made him a natural fit as the whiskey shooter in the song. Once Kent was onboard, they still needed sign-off from Kent’s label, RCA Nashville, but EYB’s no-label status helped cut out most of the red tape that had prohibited the band from featuring other artists on earlier albums.
“Working with Eli Young Band was just … fun,” Kent tells Rolling Stone. “It was entirely an artist-to-artist thing. No industry suits behind this collaboration. Just a simple text from my friend Mike Eli asking if I’d listen to a song and consider hopping on the second verse. The rest is history. We even did all the content ourselves. No hair or makeup crew. No management around. Just the band and myself and a videographer. We had a blast, and it felt how music is supposed to feel. Fun. Effortless. Raw. Like we had no rules and nobody to answer to. It felt like art.”
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That feeling was one EYB chalks up to Panhandle House and the return home to Denton. If the songwriting on Strange Hours is a fresh snapshot of the group after a quarter century since its 2000 inception, the sound is vintage Eli Young Band. Eli’s voice still carries the twang that made EYB radio-friendly during its run of chart-toppers, but it also has the rock edge to it that meant the same group never quite sounded polished enough to become a Nashville hitmaker. Recording back home reminded the band that the second part is a feature rather than a bug.
“After all these years, where every time you’re in the studio it’s not just you,” Eli says, “It’s you and this huge team of people. You’ve got your A&R folks and the label heads stopping by, making it this huge event. There’s this pressure built around every song and every moment. With this, that pressure valve got released. We were in the studio again, just us four, with our producers who are good friends of ours. It was a good time. We were able to go with the flow.”
Young, EYB’s guitarist, emphasizes Panhandle House in tying the record’s laid-back vibes and indie spirit together: “It’s second nature to us to record in that studio. When we were in college, we lived about five minutes down the road. It’s kind of like going to hang out at your second home.”
The group has been touring off of Strange Hours for most of the summer, incorporating a healthy run of new music in and around “Crazy Girl” — the top country song of 2011 by Billboard’s metrics —plus “Drunk Last Night” and “Love Ain’t.” Young says that even before the record release, he noticed fans singing along to the new material. Most members of the EYB camp have kids and family obligations, so they pick and choose when to hit the road hard. But between Strange Hours and their 25-year mark, their itinerary for the rest of 2025 will take them coast-to-coast. The return to independence, they say, has reminded them how fiercely they hit the road as a young band.
On the whole, EYB is hungry again, whether it’s a hunger for taking Strange Hours to fans or for pondering its successor.
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“We’re talking about starting to write again,” Jones says. “Maybe not as soon as this one’s done, but not long after. We just loved this process so much, and the team producing it. We’re excited to get behind this one, and for everybody to hear the songs that haven’t been released yet. I’m excited to hear what our current fans feel. I’ll read reviews, good and bad, but I’m excited to hear it, and see how it informs our live show and what comes next.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose latest books, Never Say Never and Red Dirt Unplugged are available via Back Lounge Publishing.