Turnpike Troubadours’ “Diamonds & Gasoline” Gets Limited Edition

The Turnpike Troubadours have released many great songs and albums over the years on their way to being regarded as the premier band in the Red Dirt and Texas music scene, while also presenting the greatest opportunity to assuage your mainstream country buddies towards the independent side of music. But Diamonds & Gasoline has been the ever-present fuel and gem to this phenomenon that never tires, never gets old, will never fall out of style, and will continue to be relevant and resonant for generations to come.

Released in 2010 and produced by Red Dirt legend Mike McClure, it wasn’t Turnpike’s first record (that was 2007’s Bossier City), but it was the first with the nucleus of the band with frontman Evan Felker, fiddler Kyle Nix, guitarist Ryan Engleman, and bassist/songwriter RC Edwards. Drummer Gabriel Pearson would join shortly thereafter, and multi-instrumentalist Hammerin’ Hank Early would join years later.

Though the entirety of Diamonds & Gasoline deserves praise, the combination of the two opening songs, “Every Girl” and “7 & 7” is arguably one of the greatest opening volleys from a country band in history, even though it’s the ending cover of a John Hartford song “Long Hot Summer” day that has become Turnpike’s most streamed song in history. No matter what happens with the Turnpike Troubadours moving forward, their place in history is cemented thanks to the efforts captured on Diamonds and Gasoline, and it came in at #2 on Saving Country Music’s “Greatest Albums of the Last Decade (2010-2019).”

Though Turnpike Troubadours fans would probably prefer a album of new music (which is reportedly on the way), to tide fans over, a special limited-edition metallic gold version of Diamonds & Gasoline is being released by Vinyl Me Please. Limited to 1,500 copies, the double gatefold LP will be foil stamped and numbered. It is currently on sale to Vinyl Me Please members, and will go on sale to the general population on Friday. Copies are set to ship in September.

Does this potentially signal that at some point in the not to distant future, Diamonds & Gasoline will be Certified Gold by the RIAA? The numbers are good enough that it’s definitely a possibility, if not a probability in the future. Tyler Childers and Cody Jinks both released Gold versions of their respective albums Purgatory and The Adobe Sessions right before they were officially Certified Gold. So we’ll see.

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