Ahead of the release of his new album Traffic Fiction, which drops on October 6th via Oh Boy Records, Tré Burt has shared new single “Piece of Me.” The track is described as a possible breakup song, Burt turns the sting of ending a relationship into an anthem of wishful thinking alongside sashaying organs and rail-grinding guitar. Maybe one more chance is all he needs? “You like me better when I’m in pain,” he sings slyly. “Well, baby, just look at me now.” He says, “‘Piece of Me’ is about the feeling you get when you end a relationship with someone but there still seems to be more of the story left to tell, like waking up out of a love hangover”. Following a European tour supporting Wilco, Tré Burt will play a select number of shows this fall with a full tour planned for early 2024.

The album’s 14 tracks mark a musical reinvention and is deeply influenced by the soul music he listened to with his grandfather as a child. His Grandfather, Tommy Burt passed away as he was writing this album, but their relationship is preserved via the LP. Along with “Traffic Fiction” Burt has previously shared the jubilant “Santiago” which saw support from No Depression and MXDWN, among others and also “Kids In Tha Yard” which Brooklyn Vegan called a bluesy, psychedelic soul song” Pre-order Traffic Fiction here.

Burt returned to the basics—self-recording in sequestered silence. During a Canadian tour, he set aside a few days to stay in a friend’s spare apartment and write, renting enough instruments from the affordable gear emporium Long & McQuade to build a makeshift studio for his GarageBand demos. The title track soon emerged, its effortless magnetism prompted by a poem he’d written about stupid city congestion and a piece by saxophonist and singer Gary Bartz.

After realizing he had the sound of the next album, he booked another rural cabin in Canada for 9 days and rented more guitars, basses, and the same keyboard he’d bought during the You, Yeah, You sessions. For the better part of a lifetime, Burt had told himself he didn’t have the chops to sing like those childhood heroes from the Cadillac days. But now, as he built his one-man-band demos before returning to Nashville’s The Bomb Shelter to work with a trusted band of pals and esteemed producer Andrija Tokic, his versions of those sounds poured out in circumspect love songs and joyous tunes of existential reckoning. His grandfather was dying. The world was struggling with a pandemic and the specter of a third world war. But Burt gave himself permission to have fun and be funny, to let these songs lift him and, eventually, maybe others, too. Traffic Fiction indeed feels like a buoy amid these turbulent times, something that pulls us above the wreckage.

At three points during Traffic Fiction, Burt interweaves bits of recorded conversations with his late grandfather, Tommy. They talk about Stevie Wonder, Burt’s career and the fatigue it can bring, and, finally, the sense that he’s carrying on a family tradition through these records. It’s a reminder not only of what Burt experienced while making Traffic Fiction but also of what he overcame.

Tré Burt Tour Dates

9/23: Healing Appalachia – Lewisburg, WV
9/30: Red Ex Festival 2023 – Sacramento, CA
10/7: Los Angeles Folk Festival at The Ford – Los Angeles, CA
11/2: Blue Room at Third Man – Nashville, TN

Pre-order Traffic Fiction by Tré Burt HERE