GET EMAIL UPDATES

Whenever the singer, songwriter and guitarist Frankie Ballard checks his socials, he can bet that at least one longtime fan will hit him with an all-too-familiar question: Hey man, when are you putting out new music?

Fair enough. After all, it’s been nearly a decade since Ballard released his last full-length album, El Rio. At the time, Ballard was one of Nashville’s fastest-rising hitmakers, bringing the modern-country party to packed houses on the strength of No. 1 country singles including “Sunshine & Whiskey,” “Helluva Life” and “Young & Crazy.”

Now, at long last, Ballard can respond to those inquiring fans with The Messenger, his fiery new album available March 21, 2025 from Rattle Shake Records. Written and produced with singer-guitarist Tyler Bryant and featuring vocal contributions from Larkin Poe’s Rebecca Lovell, The Messenger is a raw, inspired collection of countrified roots rock.

Throughout these 12 tracks, Ballard blends the impeccable songcraft he learned on the Nashville scene with the grittiness and guitar heroism of his favorite blues and rock ’n’ roll records — Lightnin’ Hopkins; Elvis, Johnny Cash and the rest of the Sun Records legacy. While Ballard never stopped delivering the goods as a live act, The Messenger marks the hugely anticipated return of the Michigan-born singer as a recording artist. “The catharsis of making these songs,” he says, “getting them out and seeing people react to them, I just really miss it. And I’m looking forward to the restoration of that part of my career.”

“It’s like I’m starting all over again, with a whole new perspective,” he continues. “But at the same time, I feel like I’m in my prime.”

So after eight years, Ballard has an extraordinary, life-affirming answer to those well-intentioned questions about new music. And as he explains, it’s an answer that only came together because he started asking some questions of himself.

During that whirlwind period of “Sunshine & Whiskey,” Ballard was a tireless road warrior committed to more than 200 live dates a year. Night after night, he reflects, he stepped willingly into his onstage role of “party coordinator, or the guy with the microphone who’s trying to get everybody else to have a great time.” And it was a great time.

But as months of touring turned into years and then a decade, Ballard came to realize that “God was changing my heart. And the guy who was singing about sunshine and whiskey and being young and crazy, these beer-drinking songs and party songs, was now a family man with a wife and daughter.” What’s more, he wanted his work to reflect the bigger ideas about life and faith he was pondering — like, what’s going to happen after all this is over?

The Messenger addresses issues of faith and righteousness as only Ballard can — with a directness and integrity that define the album’s storytelling as well as its sonics. “I hope that people will relate to the honest struggle in these songs,” he says.

People will tell me, ‘Frankie, you got a good foundation. Just grab a couple of these tunes that are coming off Music Row, record them and put them out. Just walk it out, man,’” Ballard reflects. “But it’s just not in my heart anymore.”

As Ballard tells it, the no-frills recording sessions, which came together casually at Tyler Bryant’s Nashville studio the Lily Pad, offered the perfect incubator for these soul-baring songs — especially after making records inside of major-label country music. “I thought, I’m just going to make a record that I want to make, one that sounds like the music I fell in love with when I first started playing guitar,” Ballard says.

“That go-for-it attitude was very invigorating and felt like freedom,” he continues. “Tyler is building a sound a lot like what Sun Records was all about, where it’s a tribe of creative people who love each other and love making music together. It’s been the most fun I’ve ever had making music. It was so pure.”

The recordings offer soulful proof of Ballard’s sentiments. You can hear the air and space in the room throughout his dynamic vocal takes; you can feel the power and punch of his overheated vintage guitar gear. As for the guitar playing, he’s at his bluesy best, with a godsent gift for tasteful, in-the-pocket phrasing as natural as his singing voice. “Co-producing the music with living guitar legend Tyler Bryant allowed me to share the heavy lifting as well as feature my incredibly gifted Soul-Brother,” Ballard stated. And he’s quick to point out that The Messenger is the first time he’s been granted enough recorded space to truly showcase that aspect of his abilities. “What I do is make guitar songs,” says Ballard, “and I believe in the power of the guitar. I don’t think the instrument is out of date or out of fashion.”

Affirming his faith like his heroes Elvis and Johnny Cash, Ballard works brilliantly in the sweet spot between gospel, blues and rock ’n’ roll, as heard on a swaggering cover of Blind Willie Johnson’s “Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed” or originals like “Freight Train of Trouble” and “Fenceless Freedom.” With Rebecca Lovell’s vocals providing support and counterpoint, The Messenger delivers, as Ballard puts it, “exactly what I want to sound like.”

In the end, The Messenger presents nothing less than the rebirth of Frankie Ballard — in sound, in faith and in mission. “It comes down to what are you doing this for?” asks Ballard. “Is it just to win the game?” For Ballard, there needs to be more. “Someday, when this baby girl of mine asks me, ‘Hey Dad, why were you gone all the time?’ I don’t want to say I was shaking it for ‘Sunshine & Whiskey.’

“I think I could look at her and say, ‘Well, it’s because I have a message of hope and faith and not denying where I’ve been. Showing people what brought me to this place, and inspiring them to search for their own faith. I mean, that’s the power of God. I think it’s a worthy pursuit.”