Roadside Graves return with “We’re Not Here” from Upcoming Album



Don Giovanni Records has announced that New Jersey veterans Roadside Graves will return with a new Rumblefish inspired album I Won’t Cry Alone on November 10, 2023.

Roadside Graves released the album’s first single “We’re Not Here”.  The track is available now across all streaming platforms and Bandcamp now.

I Won’t Cry Alone is the seventh full-length release from Roadside Graves. In 2011, the band released We Can Take Care of Ourselves, based on S.E. Hinton’s classic novel The Outsiders. During the heart of the pandemic, the band collaborated remotely and again returned to Hinton’s writing for inspiration, this time drawing from her more painful and surreal book Rumblefish. I Won’t Cry Alone mashes up narrative features of the book with morbid and almost-triumphant personal experiences. The song “Closure” introduces a third element, intertwining these threads with bits from the tragic lives of songwriters Jackson C. Frank and Sandy Denny (a third verse on Kirsty MacColl was written but ultimately left out).

John Gleason explains: “The majority of the record I Won’t Cry Alone was inspired by S.E. Hinton’s novel Rumblefish and the song ‘We’re Not Here’ is an answer to themes (memory, attachment to others, abandonment) and characters contained within. The hope is the song works beyond the novel, and taps into a few universal truths. How well can we accept what/who we truly are? Can we recognize strengths and attributes in others we don’t seem to have obtained ourselves and still move forward without giving up? I think so. The repetition of ‘I Won’t Cry Alone’ is pure defiance regardless.”

The album was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Derril Sellers (Lowlight, Last Legs) and Rob Lombardo (Mon Goose) at Cako Studios – a mighty and beautiful studio located in a repurposed church – and features contributions from Dana Sellers (piano, vocals) and Eric Haugen (pedal steel).

Roadside Graves are educators and an environmental scientist and a tech guru who hail from all over New Jersey with one stray up in Providence, RI. They’ve been a band for 25 years and have no intention of ever stopping because why not.

“Quintessential, New Jersey roots-rock storytellers, with songs full of empathetic third-person narratives”  – Pitchfork

I Won’t Cry Alone is available for pre-order now HERE.

Cover art drawn by Joe Galuppo

I Won’t Cry Alone Track List:

1. Closure

2. We’re Not Here

3. Fight Clean

4. Steve’s Song

5. Feel Everything

6. Here For The Lights

7. Patty’s House

8. Long Death

9. If You Know Where To Look

10. Nothing Happened