Article Contributed by One In A Million Media
Published on 2026-10-19
Following a near-decade-long hiatus marked by addiction and recovery, Danny Malone returns with a deeply cathartic collection. New single “Burning Hills” opens the forthcoming album, Flowers pt. 1, which is, in some ways, the Texas-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter's debut album. Fraught with impossible sadness and transcendent beauty, Flowers pt. 1 sees Malone reckoning with grief and self-recrimination, moving past trauma and bitter regret toward renewal.
Written immediately after an experimental treatment for opioid use disorder involving ibogaine, a plant-derived psychoactive compound, “Burning Hills” is the first new song Malone penned in at least eight years.
“I had been coming down off of narcotics and entering withdrawal before taking the psychedelic (ibogaine), and so I was unable to sleep and had intense anxiety,” he shares. “I walked outside in the middle of the night, and on the horizon I thought it looked like sunrise, but knew it was too early for the sun to be coming up. Slowly, I began to realize what I was looking at was a wildfire growing on the mountains surrounding the little village I was in. I very distinctly remembered that image when, later in the day, I took the psychedelic that changed my life.”
Following the release of Speeddreamer in 2014, Malone's career was on an upward trajectory, with a string of increasingly acclaimed albums and tours of North America and Europe to a growing fanbase. But his worsening drug problem eventually spun out of control as amphetamines, opiates, and benzos turned to substances including heroin and fentanyl. As the addiction grew, he became embarrassed to be seen in public and resorted to selling his instruments to fund the habit.
Malone spent much of the next half-decade blocked off from the outside world, living deep in his addiction, though members of his family and a number of friends he'd made as a musician continued to hold out hope for change before it was too late. Despite his desire to quit, previous attempts at treatment had not brought lasting recovery. He connected with treatment facilitators and underwent a two-day experience involving ibogaine.
After the treatment, he relocated to a small village in Mexico and began healing his mind, body and spirit, one day at a time. Eventually, he began feeling the weight of his self-imposed solitude and returned to Texas to be close to his mother, who was living with Parkinson's disease and increasing dementia. The stress of caring for her as she declined eventually led him to relapse.
“I continued taking care of my mom, but I knew it was getting bad, so I decided to do another ibogaine treatment to finally get rid of the addiction once and for all,” he explains.
This time, he traveled south of the border to IbogaQuest, a treatment center in Tepoztlán, near Mexico City. Malone describes the second treatment as a mystical experience in which a girlfriend who had died by suicide years earlier appeared to him.
“In a single moment, she entered my body and cleared the energy that was causing addiction in my life. I've never used again from that moment forward.”
Malone soon started playing shows again, placed his mom in a memory care facility in Austin, and moved into a tiny house nearby so he could see her every day. He began traveling to record with his old friend, singer-songwriter Anthony da Costa, at his home studio in East Nashville, enlisting Russell Durham, a composer and multi-instrumentalist known for his work with Fleet Foxes, Feist, Andrew Bird, and Cory Chisel, to create sparse yet strong string arrangements.
After years of turmoil, things were finally looking up until tragedy struck Malone's life once again. His beloved brother, best friend, drummer, and occasional co-writer Teddy died by suicide while Malone was playing a festival in northern Arkansas—an event for which Teddy had helped him pack the van the day before.
“The new me was able to survive,” Malone says. “I don't know if the old me would have been able to. The fact that this album dealt with a suicide in the past of someone really close to me, it's almost like it prepared me for my brother's suicide.”
Heartbroken, Malone moved to Nashville, where he could continue to put the pieces of a new life together. He was putting finishing touches on Flowers pt. 1 when another old friend, singer/guitarist Justin Furstenfeld of Houston rock band Blue October, reached out to ask if he'd join them as support on their upcoming 20th anniversary world tour, a powerful show of faith from a fellow artist that strengthened his commitment to sobriety.
Letting go has allowed Malone the freedom to embrace the entirety of his identity as an artist and musician, finding greater peace with his past and present while looking toward a different future. His songwriting continues to flourish, if not quite at the quicksilver pace that followed his recovery.
As its title promises, Flowers pt. 1 will be followed by a second volume, an even more stripped-bare collection comprising four-track cassette tape recordings of his newer songs, many of which are informed by his brother's passing. Danny Malone is eager to continue on his own terms, healthy, engaged, and ready for what's next.
I kept the treatment experiences attributed to Malone, removed general claims about ibogaine’s effectiveness, and omitted the location detail surrounding his brother’s death. No release date or public listening link was supplied.
