Adam Chaffins - Trailer Trash EP (2025)

This five-track EP offers a slice of the soulful country Chaffins has co-written with collaborators such as noted songwriter Adam Wright. Chaffins plays bass throughout (a special one, too, noting the loan from Bobby Bare Jr. of a 60's Fender Jazz bass once played by Waylon Jennings) as well as giving a very good account of himself on the lead vocals. The tracks were co-produced by noted studio master Frank Rogers along with Derek Wells, Mike Fiorentino, as well as Chaffins. He is a noted session man and side player but has lately been steeping up front and centred owning the mic. The aforementioned Wells joins him on electric guitar as well as co-writer Bryan Sutton on acoustic, banjo and mandolin, Russ Pahl on pedal steel, Matt Combs' strings and Robbie Crowell on keyboards, amongst others.

Chaffin has also played in the bluegrass band Town Mountain, though that influence is less obvious here overall, though mandolin, banjo, and upright bass are all a part of the mix here.

This follows up from a previous album in 2020 entitled SOME THINGS WON'T LAST, though on this evidence, some things obviously did. The opening song, Living' Til My Dying Day, moves in a direction that would be familiar to Chris Stapleton fans. A soul groove that leads to the title track, which is less upfront in tempo and even deeper in a soulful ballad mode. Dive Bar Moses is a nice story song with the piano to the fore and lays out its story with something of a different vocal delivery that has a lot of voices going in a la-la crowd singalong that suits its mood. The next song, Kentucky Girl, follows along from the last track in appreciation of his girl. It has a solid rhythm and pedal steel with a sense of joy overall in its message. The final track of the five is Little Bit At A Time which uses synth over a sweet combination of instruments, all channelled to enhance its genre-crossing tone that fades away before coming back with an extended instrumental outro.

It's not normally my favourite formula in Americana, but Chaffins, over these five tracks, lays out his credentials that sound like they should be ready for a bigger audience and could easily find a footing in the mainstream, too. Let's see where this particular boulevard will take him.