Article Contributed by Missing Piece Group
Published on 2026-05-11
Alicia Blue announces her debut album, Country Desire, due out August 28. Produced by four-time GRAMMY winner Shooter Jennings, Country Desire finds the Nashville-based singer-songwriter navigating themes of longing, consequence, and control in a blue-collar epic.
Along with the news, Alicia shares her new single, “Kentucky Cowboy,” which captures the spark of a chance encounter and its lingering possibilities.
Watch the “Kentucky Cowboy” lyric video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMkHXchRjGw
Stream “Kentucky Cowboy”: https://soundlymusic.ffm.to/ab-kycowboy
Pre-save Country Desire: https://soundlymusic.ffm.to/ab-countrydesire
“In 2024, I drove up to the Kentucky-Tennessee border where I met a cowboy who had quite an effect on me,” shares Alicia. “Between his wide open spaces, sincerity, pure heartedness and life rooted in the natural, I left with a million ‘what ifs.’ Like what would have happened if I went back sooner to say hello. I still have his spurs hanging on my wall. This song came on the tail of that experience, and I can’t wait for folks to hear it.”
That tension of reality reckoning with illusion powers every inch of Country Desire. After Shooter discovered Alicia’s early demos, he agreed to make the album after their first meeting, with no label and no budget. A few months later, the pair stepped into Hollywood’s famed Sunset Sound studio and refused to play it safe.
These sessions pulled together a powerhouse of players including Jay Bellerose on drums, whose credits include Alison Krauss, Robert Plant, and Ray LaMontagne; Brian Whelan on keys and textures, known for his work with Dwight Yoakam; Ted Russell Kamp on bass, whose credits include Sturgill Simpson and Tanya Tucker; and Greg Leisz on pedal steel, known for work with Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. Alicia’s guitarist Alex Labrie also appears, with each player serving the songs rather than polishing them.
What came out is a record obsessed with desire—not as fantasy, but as a force that distorts, drives, and dismantles.
“What didn’t lead to Country Desire? I’d say a lifetime of parts of myself that came to the surface, that needed airtime, the spotlight, so they could stop sitting in the driver’s seat. Parts that wanted the rush of a poetic life, at the cost of personal power and stability. Romance with cowboys, men with working hands but a notebook and guitar in the back. Mirrors and smoke and mirrors.”
The end result is a debut that already sounds lived-in, hard-won, and mythic.
Alicia will bring her new music on the road this summer, including a run of dates supporting Charley Crockett, with stops in California and New York.
Hailing between the South Borderlands of Texas and the orange groves of Southern California, Alicia Blue is an artist whose voice carries a blue-collar directness shaped as much by mariachi and rancheras as by classic country.
Country Desire Tracklist
1. Run Me Ragged
2. Backwards Again
3. Kentucky Cowboy
4. Hungry Ghost
5. Rose of Tennessee
6. Clean
7. Ride
8. Please Don’t Call
9. Draggin’ a Broken Heart
10. I Know What Doesn’t Fade
11. Waitress Blues
12. Mama, I’m Writing
Alicia Blue Tour Dates
May 8
Chattanooga, TN
Nightfall Concert Series
May 22
Friant, CA
Table Mountain Casino *
May 23
Reno, NV
Grand Sierra Resort *
May 24
Santa Rosa, CA
Luther Burbank Center for the Arts *
June 13
Brooklyn, NY
Skinny Dennis
June 15
State College, PA
The State Theatre
June 16
New Hope, PA
John & Peter’s
June 17
Woodbridge, NJ
Music on Main Street
June 19
Brevard, NC
Transylvania County Library
June 30
Billings, MT
Downtown Skatepark *
July 5
Berwyn, IL
American Music Festival
* supporting Charley Crockett
