The Red Clay Strays never set out to captivate country music. Even though they accidentally became Nashville's latest heroes, that's still the case.
“We're country boys,” Brandon Coleman tells me. “We were all raised in the South, and we were all raised on country music. But we just make whatever noise we make when we make our art, and it's too exhausting to try to stick to a genre.”
The Strays' frontman is seated at a table with his bandmates at Green Valley Ranch, a swanky casino-resort in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson. There's gambling there, of course, and a bar around every corner, but it's isolated from the overwhelming decadence and chaos of the Strip, 15 miles away.
Coleman, the band's chiseled-from-marble lead singer, and his bandmates in the Strays are midway through a three-day stretch in Sin City. The six-piece from Mobile, Alabama, are in town to perform “Demons in Your Choir” at the Academy of Country Music Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena — while attending as Group of the Year nominees. Their performance of “Demons” will feature a 24-person gospel choir, just like their set at the Stagecoach Music Festival in late April.
“We're happy to play to anybody that'll sit there and give us the time of day,” says Zach Rishel, the group's lead guitar player.
Last year, the Strays walked away from the ACMs with the New Vocal Duo or Group award, part of a growing list of accolades for the band, who, after getting their start in 2016, paid their dues in dive bars and listening rooms. When their slow-burning ballad “Wondering Why” caught fire online in 2022, it sent the band into an orbit that has yet to slow. They've sustained the momentum by perfecting a sonic template that blends Southern rock and soulful gospel. (If you could set the 1950s Sun Records sound loose in a hall of mirrors over seven decades, you'd get the Red Clay Strays.)
This week, the group released Gratefultheir third studio album and first since Made by These Moments two years ago. Like its predecessor, Grateful was produced by Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton), and found the band splitting time between Cobb's Georgia Mae Studio in Savannah, Georgia, and the venerable RCA Studio A in Nashville.
“We walked out of there prouder than we've been of anything else,” guitarist Drew Nix says of recording Grateful. “If nobody else on this earth likes it, I still feel that way.”
Along with Coleman, Rishel, and Nix, the Strays are drummer John Hall, bassist Andrew Bishop, and keyboard player Sevans Henderson. With Gratefulthe members coalesce to make their boldest statement yet, a record that expands the group's country-rock sound, while still firmly affixed to the rock on which the band was built: their faith.
Three songs in particular — “Demons in Your Choir,” “Revival,” and the reflective title track — explore the representation of God in a world spinning off its axis.
“Everybody has a question like, 'Why am I here? What is the point in all this?'” Coleman says. “We were lucky enough to find out: 'Oh, I'm here to do this. God created me, and put me here to do this.' It's already a blessing to know that, because a lot of people go their whole lives without knowing it.”
To be clear, Grateful isn't a book of psalms. It's a record that touches on all aspects of the human experience, from the spiritual to the secular. The Red Clay Strays nod to their Alabama roots in “Down South,” cover love in “If I Didn't Know You,” and reckon with heartbreak in “Walking Away.” In “People Hatin,” they take aim at the politically fraught climate that hangs like thick fog over life in the United States. Over each of the 11 tracks, Coleman's commanding vocals reverberate over crunchy guitars and woozy keys, drawing in listeners like a call to the pulpit. On Wednesday night in Nashville, the band communed with a capacity crowd at the Pinnacle downtown, playing Grateful straight through for the very first time.
This summer and fall, the Red Clay Strays will tackle another first when they headline arenas. Their debut at Madison Square Garden in New York in August is nearly sold out, as are back-to-back shows in October at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena. By and large, the group, who have yet to benefit from traditional country radio play, is selling at a level reserved for top-line country stars.
According to the Grammy-winning producer Cobb, the Red Clay Strays move like a pack. “You can tell these guys grew up together, and they experienced growing up in music together, traveling and touring,” he says. “They're joking, and they're funny, and they're full of joy. And at the same time, when they write, they mean what they say. Everything has a context and a deeper meaning behind it. It's very easy to communicate and talk to them, and to see their camaraderie is refreshing.”
In our interview, the members prove Cobb correct, riffing off one another and carrying on as if they need to stick together, in case it all comes undone in the morning. Like Cobb saw in the studio, each guy moves in concert with the others.
The night before we talk in Vegas, the Red Clay Strays rehearse “Demons” on the ACM stage for more than an hour, and each time they practice, the band gets Coleman to laugh out loud before he begins to sing. After rehearsal, ACM organizers put the band through the paces of social media and radio spots, each outlet looking for a clean soundbite about what fans can expect from their performance or what winning Group of the Year might mean to them. Deadpan answers like, “We're gonna sing a song,” or “It would mean we won,” may not play well on social media, but they illustrate how the Strays are handling fame: by viewing it as…just a bit much.
Before we meet up, the group has done upwards of 20 radio interviews and are wearing their exhaust on their sleeves. But a curious thing happens between the radio rounds and our sit-down: The band members get their second wind by doing what they do best — communing with fans.
While walking through the casino, the Red Clay Strays — Coleman, specifically — get recognized. The frontman is six-foot-six and hard to miss, cutting an Elvis-like figure. When he's asked to take a selfie, he obliges, and listens as a group of fans tells him how much the Strays mean to them. He evokes the same charisma in this intimate setting that he does when he's onstage and walks away refreshed.
“If we get to play music for a living, and they're the reason that we are here, the least I can do is take five minutes to talk to somebody,” Coleman says.
Coleman and Nix, along with Coleman's little brothers Matthew and Dakota, write the bulk of the Red Clay Strays' songs. The majority of the lyrics on Grateful come from some combination of the four. But “Demons in Your Choir” is all the Coleman brothers. Dakota, the youngest, started writing the song and brought it to Brandon and Matthew. They finished it together, as siblings.
“Can I ask Brandon a question?” Bishop asks, switching roles from interviewee to interviewer. “With both of your brothers writing, what's different about Matthew's songwriting and Dakota's?”
“Matthew is way more fine-tuned, and way more metaphoric,” Brandon Coleman explains. “Dakota is very raw. He'll drop some deep lines like, 'It ain't church just because it feels good. It ain't an angel just because it has wings.' He's not even trying. He's just writing stuff like that.”
“Dakota's not a musician,” Matthew interjects. “He can't play or sing or anything. He can't even really write, necessarily, but he has amazing concepts.”
Jamie Schramm/Billboard via Getty Images
Cobb sees limitless potential in the Strays' approach to songwriting and recording. He advises them to keep moving forward with blinders on. “My priority is to make sure that they've made the record that they would like to play to their family, or play to their friends,” he says. “The record is just made for them to play to people they love, and hopefully that includes their fans as well.”
Exactly who the Strays' fans are, however, is still being revealed. Their sound is not distinctly country, nor is it entirely rock. And the only thing they hold tight to as a band is their belief in God. It's why they named the record Grateful. “It's the reason we're doing it. It's the reason we started doing it,” Coleman says. “If this is why God put me here, I'm gonna do it no matter what. And I'm always gonna give the glory back to Him.”
Still, the band is aware that they're releasing music into one of the most divided atmospheres in the nation's history, and into an environment ripe for politicizing. When they issued the song “People Hatin'” last fall, they drove directly into these headwinds. During an appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast, Coleman said they dropped the stomping track because of the polarization they witnessed in American society after the September 2025 killing of Charlie Kirk. “People Hatin'” had been written in April 2025, months before Kirk's death. Onstage in Nashville at their record-release show at the Pinnacle, Coleman reminded fans of this distinction and said the band members are different politically yet were able to still come together and make Grateful.
“Jesus isn't in a political party. Jesus isn't a right wing or a left wing thing, and we don't care about politics or what you believe politically,” Colemans says. “That's the best way you can avoid all that, I think.”
“Doing right by your fellow man isn't a right wing or a left wing thing,” Hall adds. “It doesn't matter who you vote for, you should just do right.”
“Just because we're famous and have some kind of platform or whatever doesn't make our opinions any more valid or any less valid than anybody else's,” Rishel chimes in.
“I think it makes it less valid,” Hall counters, “because as you get more famous, you get more money, and your fucking idea of everyday life is so misconstrued.”
“It's a bigger concept. That's what Bob Marley and John Lennon showed,” Henderson says. “It was more about love. It was more about the bigger picture than trying to jump on a bandwagon or do whatever everyone else is doing.”
“I want to take people out of that world for a while, even if it's just for a couple of hours,” Coleman says. “We're here to entertain you, not to try to influence your vote.”
The band members say they have similar discussions among themselves, and that it's not a front just because they are currently on the record with a journalist. The goal, they say, is to understand why each of them sees the world in a certain way and share that with their fans.
“Looking out into the crazy world — everybody in the band everyone has different opinions, and we've managed to do it for 10 years together,” Coleman says. “What's stopping humanity from doing that?”
That decade together has taken the Red Clay Strays into uncharted territory at nearly every turn. In the early days, they were largely an opening act in tiny bars in Alabama and playing daytime sets at the Mile 0 Festival in Key West, Florida. Then “Wondering Why” had its viral moment. Two years later, in 2024, they signed a label deal with RCA and are now proud bellwethers for a generation of Alabama artists writing and releasing original music. Muscadine Bloodline will open dates on the Strays' impending arena tour. Another Alabama native, Taylor Hunnicutt, has been a regular support act for the Strays.
It's a way for the Red Clay Strays to pay it forward. They remember vividly their lean years: During the Covid shutdown, more than one member took to driving for rideshare apps to make ends meet. But they maintained a shared faith that they'd end up alright.
“I heard Eddie Murphy say a line,” Coleman says. “'You're not in a rowboat. You're not in a boat rowing to a destination. You're in a sailboat going wherever the wind blows.'”
Whether Grateful is the taste that blows the Strays fully into the mainstream is something they're still to find out. But they received their latest sign that they're on the right path at the ACMs.
The day after our interview, the group hears their name called as winners of Group of the Year. They walk to the podium together, as a pack, and Coleman approaches the microphone.
“Thank you, Jesus,” he says.
