The Dirty Guv'nahs - The Dirty Guv'nahs (2009)

Blending the classic sounds of Southern rock with a youthful energy and a jam band's love of the road, the Dirty Guv'nahs play music with more than enough soul and good times to go around. Hailing from Knoxville, Tennessee, the Dirty Guv'nahs create an energized vibe recalling the Black Crowes, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the Allman Brothers Band, with a dose of Americana and the Band tossed in for seasoning. Though the band was started for laughs, the strength of albums like 2012's Somewhere Beneath These Southern Skies and 2014's Hearts on Fire proved they were no joke. The band split in 2015, but their 2025 album Promises showed they were as strong and vibrant as ever.

In 2006, bassist Justin Hoskins was a college student in Knoxville who heard the promoter of a local concert was looking for an opening act. As a prank, Hoskins suggested his band for the gig, even though he didn't have one at the time. Fate called his bluff, and Hoskins landed the show and had just a week to put together a band. Justin pulled in favors from his music scene friends, and he recruited for lead vocals James Trimble, Michael Jenkins and Cozmo Holloway on guitars, Chris Doody and Michael Jenkins on keyboards, and his brother Aaron Hoskins on drums. The concert went well, and the Dirty Guv'nahs continued playing out, quickly developing a loyal local following. The Dirty Guv'nahs won a university battle of the bands contest and thereby earned studio time to record their 2008 debut album, Don't Need No Money, and their energetic and inspired live shows garnered them opening spots for acts like the Zac Brown Band, Wilco, and the Levon Helm Band, among others. Their eponymously titled sophomore album arrived in 2009, and a performance slot at Bonnaroo led to a recording session that same year at Levon Helm Studios, resulting in 2010's Youth Is in Our Blood. The band continued to evolve its sound on its fourth album, Somewhere Beneath These Southern Skies, which was produced by Ross Copperman, engineered by Richie Biggs, and released in 2012 through a distribution deal with Dualtone Music. Two years later, fifth album Hearts on Fire charted at number 107 on the Billboard 200, but in 2015 the bandmembers announced that the Dirty Guv'nahs would be breaking up, and they held a farewell concert in Knoxville in September of that year. However, by early 2018 they were back in business, scheduling spring shows in Knoxville and Atlanta and vowing to "bring rock and roll back to the people."

True to their pledge, their first album after reuniting was 2016's Music for the People, a live set that showed they sounded as strong as ever since returning to the stage. The band went into the studio for 2021's Revival, another rootsy effort that was long on Southern spirit, and in 2023 they delivered a seven-song EP, Roots. 2025's Promises was one of the group's most ambitious albums to date, adding horns on several tracks and conjuring a Rolling Stones-style groove on "Paying by the Hour." ~ Steve Leggett & Mark Deming