Julien Baker & TORRES Share New Song ‘Dirt’

Julien
Baker & TORRES have already released three
critically acclaimed singles from Send a Prayer My
Way. Songs ‘Sylvia’
and ‘Tuesday’
showcased their shared love of country music while
highlighting their distinct songwriting styles and
interpretations of the genre.

Previous to that they
debuted ‘Sugar
in the Tank’ on The
Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon—the song was
the #2 most-added track at AAA radio and currently holds the
#11 spot on the chart. Earlier this month they also
previewed ‘Bottom
of a Bottle’ during their
appearance on The
Daily Show.

Julien Baker &
TORRES have now released a new single,
‘Dirt,‘
offering another glimpse into their forthcoming
collaborative album, Send a Prayer My Way,
out April 18 via Matador Records.

Send A
Prayer My Way has been in the works since Baker and
TORRES played their first show together in 2016 and at the
end one singer turned to the other and said, “You know,
we should make a country album.” This is the origin
story, the stuff of legend in the world of country music,
and the beginning of a collaboration between two artists
already admired for their spare, elegant lyrics as well as
the courage to share their struggles with those who love
their music. It’s also the beginning of creating a work
that, like the most enduring country albums, sustains and
inspires, reminding both singer and listener that not one of
us is ever totally alone in this world, that music is a
steady companion.

Baker &
TORRES first teased Send a Prayer My Way
with the single ‘Sugar in the Tank,’ which
garnered acclaim from fans and critics worldwide. The duo
capped off 2024 with a performance of the track on The
Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The song became
the #2 most-added track at AAA radio and currently sits at
#30 on the chart. Reflecting Julien Baker and
TORRES’ deep love of country music, ‘Sugar in
the Tank’ joyfully reclaims the genre’s traditions and
iconography, which until recently felt exclusionary. Watch
the official video—featuring original choreography by
Stud Country co-founder Sean
Monaghan, alongside star members of the Stud
Country community, and directed by Caity
Arthur

Listen: For some of us,
maybe even most of us, it’s been a rough year. As I write
these words, it’s mid-November in Chicago, the warmest
autumn on record, and the bad news keeps coming. Family and
animals and homes washed away in the rural south. A wildfire
season that never ends. Too much water in some places, not
enough in others. Back in my home state of Texas, pregnant
people, some barely out of childhood, are dying for lack of
medical care. And Lord have mercy if you, or someone you
love, is an undocumented immigrant, or if you’re trans,
queer, poor, Black, and the list goes on (and on and on).
Sometimes it feels like the whole damned world has made up
its mind to destroy itself once and for all. So I feel it in
my bones when Julien Baker sings, That it can’t get
much worse depends on who you’re askin. Maybe you feel
it, too, and maybe you could use the good company of this
much-anticipated country album by critically acclaimed
artists Julien Baker & TORRES (aka Mackenzie
Scott).

Send A Prayer My Way has been in the
works for years. Imagine two young musicians playing their
first show together at Lincoln Hall, a much-loved venue here
in Chicago. It’s January 15, 2016, and bone chillingly
cold outside, especially for a couple of southerners. When
the show is over and they’re shooting the shit, one singer
says to the other, “We should make a country album.”
This is the origin story, the stuff of legend in the world
of country music, and the beginning of a collaboration
between two artists already admired for their spare,
elegant lyrics as well as the courage to share their
struggles with those who love their music. It’s also the
beginning of creating a work that, like the most enduring
country albums, sustains and inspires, reminding both singer
and listener that not one of us is ever totally alone in
this world, that music is a steady companion. Why are you
weeping? Whom are you seeking,” they sing in “No
Desert Flower.” I can take more than a little rain/If
the going’s tough I will not cower/And all the passing
years won’t wash me away.

I’ll lay my cards on
the table from the get-go: Send A Prayer My Way is a
damn fine country album, written and sung in the best of the
outlaw tradition—defiant, subversive, working class, and
determined to wrestle not only with addiction, regret and
bad decisions, but also with oppressive systems of power.
(In the best outlaw country, The Law is no friend of yours,
and neither is The Man; in TORRES and Baker’s music,
neither are religious blowhards or mothers who can’t
stomach their daughter’s sexuality.) These are songs about
wrapping up a long shift and driving home bone tired, just
hoping for a little weed and a quiet place to put your feet
up; or falling off the wagon (again) and wondering if this
time it will finally drag you under the wheels; or thinking
that bad decisions are the only decisions you know how to
make. If you ask how I’ve been doing I won’t lie/More
than half the time I’m only skatin by/Waiting for the ice
to melt beneath me, Baker sings in the opening song
“Dirt,” and a few lines later, this beauty: Spend
your whole life getting clean/Just to wind up in the
dirt.

Mercifully, this is only the beginning of
the stories TORRES and Baker are determined to tell. Because
these are also songs about radical empathy and second
chances, and third chances, and while there’s plenty of
struggle and regret in here, there’s also humor and
defiance. In my book there’s no such thing as guilty
pleasure/As long as your pleasure’s not unkind, TORRES
sings in “The Only Marble I’ve Got Left.” On
“Tuesday,” she turns her gaze backward, remembering a
love affair long in the rearview mirror, and the harm done
when passion meets shame. And if I could only go back in
time/I’d rewrite our whole story…And now I know that
your shame was not mine/And I am perfect in my Lord’s
eyes. There is clarity in time’s passage, at least
sometimes, and whatever grace some of us can muster often
comes from taking the irreverent, and much funnier, low
road. And in this way, Send a Prayer My Way reminds
me of Lucinda Williams’s Happy Woman Blues (1980),
or Loretta Lynn singing about The Pill in 1975. And just
like those badass women, Baker and TORRES aren’t asking
for anybody’s tolerance, or forgiveness, and they sure as
shit aren’t asking for permission.

And I’m here
for every word of it. Because some of us sinners (and I mean
that as a compliment of the highest order)—the criminals
and cheaters among us, the addicts and lonely-hearted, those
of us who, in the words of that brilliant and mad old
outlaw, Townes Van Zandt, wear your skin like iron, your
breath as hard as kerosene—were nursing our own
private heartaches long before the world started its most
recent long skid. Some of us have learned the hard way that
leaning on poetry, stories, and songs ain’t a bad way to
save your own life.

So listen: Whatever your
story—if you’ve been staying up late and sleeping in,
dodging calls from old friends and wondering how many times
you can break your own heart through every fault of your
own; if you’ve been missing work, or skipping school, or
blowing past deadlines like they’re four-way stop signs on
the highway to hell; and most especially, if you’re
feeling afraid for your life, or the lives of those you hold
most dear—I hope you will find some comfort in these
twelve songs. I hope you will put a little sugar in the
tank and let these two singers love you all the way
to hell and back. Because here’s the thing about going
to hell and back: You came back.

About Julien
Baker

A native of Memphis who began playing music in
church as a child, Julien Baker shot to
worldwide attention in 2015 with her show-stopping debut,
Sprained Ankle. Recorded in only a
few days, it was a bleak yet hopeful meditation on identity,
addiction, faith, resilience and redemption. An intense and
immersive performer, her live shows were described by
The New Yorker as “…. hushed,
reverential. The only sounds you hear between songs are her
fingers as she tweaks the tuning on her electric guitar,
scattered whispers between friends, and the rustling as the
crowd waits patiently for Baker to start strumming
again.”

Baker’s acclaim grew with
2017’s Matador debut Turn Out
the Lights and the following year’s
self-titled debut EP with
boygenius, the trio she formed with fellow
era-defining artists Phoebe Bridgers and
Lucy Dacus. With the release of her
2021’s solo album Little Oblivions,
Baker cemented herself as “one of
the leading female singer/songwriters of her generation,
both for her music’s muted grandeur and lyrics that seem
to dive headlong into emotional chaos”
(Rolling
Stone). The album was met with
worldwide critical acclaim and supported with performances
on Late Night with Seth
Meyers, The Late
Show with Stephen Colbert,
The Late Late Show with James
Corden and
CBS This Morning’s Saturday
Sessions.

Baker reunited
with boygenius in 2023 for their first
full-length, the record, which won
three Grammy Awards and was supported by
the biggest tour of the musicians’ collective careers —
including sold out shows at New
York’s Madison Square Garden and Los Angeles’
Hollywood Bowl.

About
TORRES

TORRES is the pseudonym of
Mackenzie Scott. She was born January 23,
1991, and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her wife Jenna,
stepson Silas, and puppy Sylvia. She has been releasing
albums and performing as TORRES since
2013.

What an enormous room is
TORRES’ sixth studio album (her third
with Merge). It was recorded in September and October 2022
at Stadium Heights Sound in Durham, North Carolina. It was
engineered by Ryan Pickett, produced by
Mackenzie Scott and Sarah
Jaffe, mixed by TJ Allen in
Bristol, UK, and mastered by Heba Kadry in
NYC. The album contains 10 songs. Mackenzie
wrote all of them. Sarah played bass
guitar, synths, drums, organ, and piano.
Mackenzie sang vocals, played guitar, bass,
synths, organ, piano, and programmed drums. Additional synth
bass, tambourine, and shakers were played by TJ
Allen.

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