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Photo by Brooke Barloe

It’s been a long year, and it feels like the good times have been “Too Far Gone,” but it’s starting to feel like things are turning a corner. If you aren’t familiar with the Nashville-based 5-piece Tobacco Road, then their latest single, “Too Far Gone,” is a perfect introduction, and truly a song that can shift your mood. Filled with great harmonies, finger-picked melodies, and guitar licks, it’s a soulful song in every fashion: a showcase for the varied influences the band imbues. We were happy to find the band in a park and dig in on modern blues, where to find some good eats, and more:

OnesToWatch: Why did you decide to be a band? 

Briggs: Me and Annabel went to college together, me and Maddie were in school near each other at the same time and played in a band together. TJ and I are cousins. So it was a great group that came together in a really cool way. Before this group came together, I was just feeling the weight of how hard it is in today's day and age to be a solo artist. You’re playing the waiting game, waiting for socials to pop off or whatever it may be. We saw some friends putting groups together in Nashville and it just felt like you had so much more control over the outcome versus other routes that you can take in music. We're willing to go play 85 shows a year like we did this past year and go out and pack the van and just take the show wherever it needs to go. So I think whenever you have a group of people that are like-minded, that energy feeds off of each other and creates something really cool and special. So, that's why we’re a band.

Why does the band setting work best for you guys as creatives? 

Madi: Me and TJ were actually just talking about this over the weekend, but I think it makes you a superhero group because we can all give all of our own 100% into one fifth of the group. So then you get 500% instead of just one person doing 100%. 


Somebody passed math right there, I could tell. 

Annabel: When I moved to Nashville, it was around the same time that Madi and I moved in together, we both were just like, sure, we know Briggs, fuck it, why not? I wanted to do a solo project at the same time, but I was just launching it. The biggest thing about being in a band that I've learned, and it definitely has its challenges, is learning to give up that control of the art and the ego as well. You are one cog in this amazing machine. The coolest thing that I've loved about being in a band is that I've grown in my musicianship in a way that I never would have. We just take all these different influences and strengths and weaknesses and merge them together. When I've written a song and then brought it to the group, it becomes a totally different thing. It goes on its own path, it takes a bunch of different turns. It's really cool. I feel like I've really learned from being part of a band. 

TJ: I was doing the solo thing for 2.5 years before I met anybody and every single time I wanted to do anything, it was just dragging 4 other dudes to the steps every single time. And it's cool here that when I have an off day and I really don't want to be here, I have 4 other people that are there begging me to put my best foot forward all the time. 

Briggs: Mainly just echoing what everybody else has said – the collaborative part, and that's why you join bands – it's cool when you bring half a song to a band, and then you don't have any control over it anymore, that’s a big learning curve. If you want to have so much control over this that you won't let it breathe enough to let other people kind of paint on it in their own way, then why are you in a band? So I think we're pretty good about letting each other shine on where each of our strengths are and helping each other out where the weaknesses are. 

Hayden: I’ve been playing bands throughout my life and it's really great with these guys and gals because we’re like brothers and sisters. We just all get along and I think we all have different strengths and weaknesses that complement each other real well. And pretty smooth sailing. 

Let's get into your process. Are there certain roles in the music creation? People just bring ideas and you play with them collectively? How does a song come together for you guys? 

Madi: We've been a band now for about a year and a half around that point. So in that time, as a full unit, it's definitely changed. We're waterfalling an album at the moment, and I think there's a little bit of a different process on each song. About half the songs on the album came from someone starting a song, and bringing what we think is 75% done to the group, and then it changes. At that point we give up that control, really leave room for it to completely grow. Everybody has interesting parts that they add to in the arrangement. Recently we just had a couple days off in Texas, and we had a writer’s retreat moment that was really cool. So it just depends, honestly. 

Briggs: With recording, we recorded that full album and we love it, but we've played them so much on the road now that they've evolved into their own versions. So we are taking the approach on this next album to have these songs written and take them out on the road and really spend time with them so that whenever we go into the studio, we know exactly what we want to do. That’s just becoming tighter as a band and understanding one another a little bit more in that way. 

Great. Let's get into the album. How old are some of these songs? What kind of time period are we in? 

Annabel: There's a couple songs that didn't exist before we started recording the album. We wrote them together and they came from that time period, but there's also 2 songs in particular that Hayden had written a little bit while back that he brought to us. So it's a big range of our time together as a band. 


Hayden: Yeah, I would say the first EP that we released in 2025, that felt like songs that had been taken from individuals, kind of like past lives. We threw it together to make an EP really quick. The majority of the album itself is cool because I feel like it's us coming into our own sound over the past year and learning to write together. It’s shifting from the individual songwriters that we all are and into this mesh of songwriters as a group. 

Madi: I feel like most were written Summer 2025, Fall 2025 era.

I always find self-editing really interesting. So how many songs were written before you settled on what the album track list was? 

Madi: Honestly, I think because of us being a pretty new band, most of the songs that are on the album just kind of immediately were on the track list. We were finding that sound. Each one, we liked more than the last. 

Annabel: There were a couple songs that we liked but just didn’t make the most sense on this project. 

Madi: Yeah, but just a few. There’s artists writing 200 songs and then picking the best 15 from that. And that's just not where we're at with touring, too. We very much play when we are touring, and then live, and then go and write. 

What is your personal ambition for this album? Additionally, what do you hope your audience takes from it? 


Madi: My personal ambition is just to have a project of work that we just feel is our project of work as a whole, this is the band's album. As TJ had said, we've also learned that the songs adapt as we take them on the road. But the album itself, where it is, is a snapshot of that time. When we recorded it in January and March of this year, that is the song as it was then, which is what I'm excited to share with the world.
We might play something different at the live show, but the album is a time capsule. 

Annabel: My personal ambition for this project is... I feel like there's a lot of conversation about genre these days, and it's becoming less and less necessary to put bands into certain genres or sounds or boxes. The best compliment we get a lot live is people saying they don’t know how to place our sound. Like “There's really nothing quite like what you're making, I really can't define it.” 
I really want to spread that feeling amongst our listeners, because I think it's very important to us with how diverse our interests are as people, and as musicians on our own, and then as a collective. I would really love for that to come through with this project. 

TJ: I just want to reach as many people as possible and to get filthy rich off of this album. 

Briggs: I like what Madi said, we talk about like just songs, how they can transform so much over time and even the way that people interpret them or listen to them and the way we play them. Songs have always been really core to who we are as a band. Like Annabel was saying too, the genre is fluid, but as long as the song speaks to us, then it’s our voice. 

Hayden: I like that this album lets us cast a bigger net of genre and variety. It's exciting knowing that we're putting out music that people are going to like regardless of the sound that we already have out. 


If you are at your most peaceful, your most zen, your most relaxed, where are you? 

Hayden: Somewhere in nature, just relaxed. 

TJ: North Carolina Mountains Creek, mountain vibe. That's where I'm at. 


Briggs: A river somewhere. Crystal clear, blue water river somewhere. 


Annabel: I'm probably in the Texas hill country, and my family's all there. And my dogs, I love animals. 

Madi: Probably, also near some water on a boat, but not the beach. No sand.

You're taking the rest of the band out to celebrate. Where do you take them? 

Hayden: Applebee's. 


TJ: Steakhouse on Dariel's card. 

Briggs: Showman's $4.40, East Nashville. 

Madi & Annabel: Dave & Buster's. 

You are collectively building a festival, each one of you gets to add a band. 


Hayden: MJ Lenderman. 

TJ: Flipturn.

Briggs: Rolling Stones. 

Madi: Big Thief. 

Annabel: Olivia Rodrigo. 


What is your worst idea that you've brought to the band and how did it end up being your best idea? 

Annabel: We were thinking of band names. Very early on, it was just me, Madi and Briggs. One of the ones that came up for me was Hands Tied. I can't say why it's good, but anyway. 

Briggs: A kinky little folk trio. 

Yeah. I mean, the publicist would love that. 

Give me a non-music recommendation, something you'd put a friend on. 

Madi: I just finished reading Project Hail Mary, which was so good. 


Annabel: Go vote and read your news. 

Briggs: I would say go buy a bunch of cheap river tubes and float down the river with a speaker with your friends. 

Hayden: Movie rec, Goodfellas. 


TJ: Come to the Swamp Rabbit and get a free loaf of bread. We're in Greenville, South Carolina right now, first time visiting, you get a free loaf of bread. 

We would love a music rec. 

Hayden: Morrissey Boulevard. 

Briggs: The Last Wild Buffalo. 


Madi: Emerson Bruno, he just put out an album. 

Annabel: Kate Stephenson. One of our best friends and she's just so, so good at what she does, which is a lot of things. 

What's the best advice you would give to another band? 


Madi: Don't do it! Kidding. If it's a band, you gotta be able to give what everybody else is giving. So if everybody else is given their all, then you gotta do the same. 

Listen to "Too Far Gone" below: