Awesome Stuff Department: Hear New Albums from Darrell Scott and Gretchen Peters

Boy, are you ever in luck.

Two of the best-written albums you’ll hear all year – which both happen to hit the market next Tuesday, January 31 – are available for streaming right now.

Gretchen Peters has Hello Cruel World up at Performing Songwriter. If you grabbed that free sampler we steered you toward last month, you know that you need to give this a listen, stat. I have “The Matador” playing right now and it’s a killer. There’s a nice duet with Rodney Crowell, too. Don’t miss it.

Here’s the Gretchen Peters listening link.

Meanwhile, Darrell Scott – he of “Long Time Gone” and “It’s a Great Day to Be Alive” fame, to name but two of his best-known radio songs – has Long Ride Home up at Folk Alley. A deeply personal collection mining Scott’s early years and hard country roots, it includes duets with musical heroes Guy Clark and Wayne Scott, the singer’s own late father. Whereas he played and tracked all instruments separately on his last album, this time Scott builds a crack studio band around Hargus ‘Pig’ Robbins, Lloyd Green, Dennis Crouch, and Kenny Malone, and the live energy comes across beautifully on record. Great stuff.

Here’s the Darrell Scott listening link.