The Flatlanders return with first disc in 12 years

"Treasure of Love" will be out on July 9 via Rack'em Records/Thirty Tigers. The band released the first single "Sittin' On Top of the World," often a show closer.

The band's last album was "The Odessa Tapes," a 2012 disc of old material.

"Sometimes you're sitting on top of the world, the next minute you are face down on the bottom. Just like life. (And the very next minute you are at the top again)," said Hancock about the song. "Because better to sit on top of it.

"Rather than carry it. It's a song that once you have it in your head you have to sing it," added Joe Ely.

Completed during COVID-19 lockdowns with the help of longtime friend and collaborator Lloyd Maines, "Treasure of Love" finds a mix of originals plus vintage tunes the band picked up during their 50-year career.

"I like to say that this album evolved more than it was recorded," said Ely, who hosted the initial recording sessions and worked extensively on the tracks at his Spur Studios in Austin. "We'd been chipping away at these songs for a while without ever really finishing anything, so when lockdown started, it seemed like the perfect time to really focus on it."

The trio played down takes when they had time between sessions or tours. It was only when the COVID-19 pandemic forced Ely, Gilmore, and Hancock to simultaneously clear all of their calendars that the band realized they had an album on their hands and the time to complete it.

"A lot of groups our age are either dead or not speaking to each other anymore," said Gilmore, "but I think part of the reason The Flatlanders are still together is that we've all had our own separate careers along the way. We're all such strange individualists, but we can co-captain this ship together because every time we come back to it, we feel that same magic we felt when we first started playing together."

The track list is:
1. Moanin' Of The Midnight Train
2. Long Time Gone
3. Snowin' On Raton
4. She Smiles Like A River
5. Love Oh Love Please Come Home
6. Give My Love to Rose
7. Treasure of Love
8. Satin Shoes
9. The Ballad of Honest Sam
10. Mama Do the Kangaroo
11. She Belongs to Me
12. I Don't Blame You
13. Mobile Blues
14. Ramblin' Man
15. Sittin' On Top of the World