Charlie Worsham - Compadres (2023) [Hi-Res]

For the last seven years, singer/songwriter Charlie Worsham has devoted himself to honing his musical vision by collaborating with many of the most innovative musicians in Nashville today, working as a session player and writer, and serving as a central member of a high-profile band of first-rate players. Now, the 27-year-old multi-instrumentalist is gearing up to release a debut album that not only reveals his tightly refined musical prowess, but announces Worsham as a country artist of uncommon ingenuity, substance, and soul. Joined by a coterie of musicians carefully assembled through his years of dedication to the Nashville scene—as well as through his studies at Berklee College of Music—Worsham performs the singular feat of infusing each track on his upcoming debut with a reverence for country’s rich heritage while ultimately delivering a bold new sound entirely his own.As a songwriter, Worsham builds varied moods and sounds both by mining his expansive musical background and venturing into new sonic territory with an infectiously playful spirit. According to Worsham, that sense of adventurousness is fueled by a passion for music that arose at a very early age. “One of my earliest memories of music is going to see my dad play in a local band—he’s a banker by trade, but a drummer at heart,” says Worsham, who grew up 100 miles south of Memphis in Grenada, Mississippi. “During sound check I sat in his lap and hit the drums, and that’s the first time I got the bug to make music.” Worsham began taking piano lessons in kindergarten, and in second grade caught a performance by bluegrass banjo player Mike Snider while visiting Opryland with his family. “When we got home my parents bought me a banjo and got me lessons, and after that I got in the habit of taking on a new instrument every year, including the guitar and mandolin and fiddle,” Worsham recalls. He then went on to win the Junior National Banjo Championship at age 12 and—later that year—joined Snider on stage at the Grand Ole Opry.In high school—soon after scoring his first electric guitar by busking in front of a guitar shop to raise the final hundred bucks on the price tag—Worsham joined a local band and began gigging in bars on the weekend. “All the other guys in the band were much older than I was, so they took me under their wing and that became my high school job,” he says. After graduating, Worsham headed for Berklee, where he studied production and engineering but left after two and a half years to move to Nashville in summer 2006 and play banjo, mandolin, and guitar in a much-renowned local act. Although the group had a publishing deal with Chrysalis Records and toured throughout the country, several potential deals with labels fell apart and Worsham ended up departing the band in late 2009. Along with working as a writer—as well as a session musician for Eric Church, Dierks Bentley, and others artists—Worsham continued penning his own songs and recording demos, eventually landing a deal with Warner Music Nashville and opening for the likes of Taylor Swift and Miranda Lambert.Charlie Worsham has the entire Music City creative community in his corner, and that’s never been more apparent than with his upcoming project Compadres. Due October 13, the five-cut album finds a handful of his friends and admirers putting their stamp of approval on an artist who makes high-value music with even higher-value intent. Worsham’s decade-long career has earned him unparalleled praise from NPR, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Tennessean, Billboard, Rolling Stone, Forbes, American Songwriter and more. A versatile celebration of musicianship and camaraderie, Compadres will feature collaborations with Dierks Bentley, Luke Combs, Elle King, Kip Mo