With Sell Their Souls, Jeremy Porter and The Tucos have made what may be their hardest-rocking record yet — but that doesn’t mean they’ve abandoned the hooks, twang and power-pop instincts that have always been part of Porter’s songwriting.

After close to four decades of making music, Porter still seems far more interested in what comes next than in settling comfortably into a particular sound. We caught up with him to talk about the heavier edge of Sell Their Souls, taking unexpected turns in the studio, the songs that proved hardest to crack, and why continuing to move forward remains essential.

Sell Their Souls has a particularly tough and swaggering sound to it. There’s a great mix of power pop, punk, rock and alt-country, but to my ears the balance feels a little heavier and rougher than on some of your earlier work. Was that something you consciously wanted to explore, or did the songs simply take you there?

Hey there – thanks for having me Patrick and thanks for those kind words! Yea this is probably the most “ROCK” album I’ve ever done. I’ve been into metal and hard rock since I was 9 years old, and my love for that stuff has only grown. We listened to a lot of metal and hard rock at my house during the pandemic, and I suppose it was bound to seep in a little deeper than it had before, but it wasn’t calculated.

I write constantly and it’s all over the place, as you sort of allude to, but the focus is on quality of song over genre of song. The feel or vibe – heaviness, twanginess, popiness, mellowness, whatever – that all comes into play when we’re deciding which songs to record, and especially when sequencing the record. That sequencing part is really important to me – that the album flows well from song-to-song and overall. This is when I start to think about things like “ok after these 2 heavy songs we need to take it down for the next track…” or “those two songs sound too similar to be next to each other…” stuff like that. So I guess, to answer your question, it wasn’t calculated, but it was something that’s always in play throughout the project.

Change the Rules really struck me as a tour de force. It moves through different tempos and moods, and the arrangement keeps opening up as the song progresses. How did that song develop, and did you know from the beginning that it was going to become something bigger and more elaborate?

Thanks! Yea that’s one of those harder-rocking songs that starts to get a little proggy, for us at least, and kind of sets this album apart from our previous work. It came together with that intro riff, that I think is sorta Drive-By Truckers-ish, then the hard-rock chunks in the verse, so none of that is a big departure for us, but I’m always looking to do something different, something we’ve never tried, and switching to 6/8 time for that middle section and especially hiring a real string section and composer to do that orchestration is WAY out of our wheelhouse. The idea for the strings came in the demoing stage, might have been Gabe that brought it up. So we did a primitive string arrangement with synthesizers on the demo, which was fun and helped us decide… is this cheezy? Does it rule? Do we care? Just one of those things to make the song stick out, get out of our lane and take new chances in the studio, and see what happens! I’m so glad you dig it!

The Real McCoy is my favorite song on the album. It seems to bring together so much of what I love about The Tucos, while your vocal feels particularly pure and direct. I also love the way the music seems to be all over the place while the relationship in the lyrics seems to be going in much the same direction. What does that song mean to you, and how did it come together?

It’s so fun for me to put out a record and hear what peoples’ favorite songs are. You’re the first one to even mention that song I think! I brought it in and we struggled with the arrangement and the feel of everything except the verse, which fell in very naturally. We had two big issues – it was too long, and the chorus wasn’t enough of a hook. Well, we cut a chorus out and replaced it with the bridge, so it was at a better length. Then at one point before we demoed it we were at The Loft, one of our favorite studios here in Michigan, working on something else and talking to Tim Patalan, the main guy there who’s been a big part of everything we’ve done, and I asked him about the chorus, told him we were struggling with it, and he just knew right off – “you gotta go full-STONES on it!” so we did exactly that, because Tim knows his shit, and it made the whole thing just work. It’s still the longest song on the record, and I get heart palpitations when songs approach 4 minutes, but I like how it turned out. Hope Jagger gets his ears on it!

You’ve been making records and playing in bands for more than three decades, and you’ve moved through punk, alt-country, power pop, solo work and The Tucos without ever seeming particularly interested in staying in one lane. At this point in your career, do you still feel like you’re searching for something, or have you reached a place where you’re simply comfortable being Jeremy Porter and letting the music take whatever shape it wants?

Closer to 4 decades bud! But yeah, that’s a loaded question, isn’t it? I’m always searching for something, always looking at what’s next, how I’m (or we’re) gonna make it different, better, fun, exciting… but I’m also always just me, so it’s gonna have some hooks and it’s gonna have some lyrics that hopefully mean something to or provoke a response from somebody, and it’s gonna be guitar heavy and we’re hopefully gonna get out of the song and off the stage before we wear out our welcome. I don’t think the lane shifts are that drastic, they’re all on the same highway anyhow, though it’s a fairly wide swath of heavy/distorted amps and spacious/acoustic guitars, and all points between, I guess.

Id’ guess that most singer/songwriters and touring musicians aren’t particularly comfortable with their own self-image, in their own skin, or whatever. I’m not much different. Putting myself out there with lyrics, performances, writings, even social media posts – yea, I can’t say I’m comfortable with any of it, except probably the performance part, which, when going well, is where I am at the most peace. Or maybe “peace” isn’t the right word, because rock and roll isn’t supposed to be peaceful, but let’s say content. It’s a difficult line to tread these days, trying to get your stuff out there while presenting yourself the way you want. I’m so far from an expert at it.

You’ve said that Sell Their Souls is your favorite thing you’ve ever done — while also admitting that it’s probably too fresh to know where it will ultimately sit in your catalog. That made me wonder: after all these years of writing, recording and touring, what does a record have to do now to make you feel that you’ve moved forward? What are you hearing in Sell Their Souls that tells you you’re not simply repeating yourself?

Well, context is probably important here, because I’m not sure when or where I said that, but I think it was in the context of…the newest thing is SUPPOSED to be your favorite thing, and if it isn’t then you did something wrong, yea? But yes – these things have to have some time behind them before I and talk about them objectively. But I am proud of it, and I do think it’s good.

I think a lot of what we talked about above speaks to why this record isn’t just a repeat of previous albums, just like I don’t think Dynamite Alley was or Candy Coated Cannonball before that. I remember when we were making Don’t Worry…It’s Not Contagious, our bassist at the time Patty said he felt it was basically Above the Sweet Tea Line part 2 – not a big enough departure, not enough new ground. I don’t necessarily feel that way, but I did take it to heart and put more effort into working harder on doing new and different things from that point on. It started with songs like “Put You On Hold” and “Dead Ringer” from Candy Coated and remains with songs like “Real McCoy” and “Rosencrantz” and “Change the Rules” off the new one.

It’s important to me to keep moving. Existing in this rock and roll world is more or less my life, and doing it for so long now is – in itself – some level of success for me, but without moving forward – new ideas, new directions… it would just turn into work. I could probably make more money and get bigger accolades playing in a tribute band or doing covers gigs, but I’d just as soon wash dishes or work at Taco Bell at this point.