Kevin Gordon Shares New Single 'You Can't Hurt Me No More' Co-Written with Kim Richey

Nashville singer-songwriter and poet Kevin Gordon has shared his new single “You Can’t Hurt Me No More” from his upcoming album The In Between, out on September 13, his first full-length since 2018’s acclaimed Tilt & Shine, and first since his throat cancer diagnosis.

The slow-burning, country-tinged rocker, written with Kim Richey, comes on like a fever trance. It’s a title the song’s narrator of the song hopes is true. “It’s about vulnerability,” Gordon says of the song. “You’re heartbroken, but you put on your game face out in the world, and keep preaching to yourself that you ‘are more than enough’ — then you see your ex and all that façade crumbles.”

Produced by Joe V. McMahan (Justin Townes Earle), The In Between follows Gordon’s 2018 album Tilt & Shine, which was acclaimed by the likes of Rolling Stone, NPR’s World Cafe, Paste Magazine, and Wide Open Country, and was called one of the best of its year by Nashville Scene and Premier Guitar. The New York Times, in a full profile under the headline “A Musician Or a Poet? Yes to Both,” once characterized his music as “an often harrowing tour of the back-roads South,” a theme that continues on The In Between. 

Along with the album’s announcement, Gordon shared the lead single and album opener “Simple Things,” which was mixed by five-time GRAMMY Award winner Tchad Blake (Bonnie Raitt, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, Al Green, The Pretenders, Tom Waits), as well as previous single “Keeping My Brother Down.” Written during the pandemic about, as he puts it, “contact, that exchange of energy between me and an audience,” “Simple Things” took on new meaning when in the middle of recording the album, Gordon was diagnosed with throat cancer.

The call came between the first two recording sessions. “I knew something was up when the first scan results came back; I drove straight to New Orleans and stayed pretty much out of my mind for three days. I was terrified, and thought I would lose it completely if I sat in my house staring at the wall any longer,” recalls Gordon. “They were using words like malignant, which scared the hell out of me. Those second tracking sessions were more emotional for me, personally,” he continues. With guitars, drums, and bass completed for most tracks but vocals for only one or two, the sessions had to go on indefinite pause while Gordon underwent radiation and chemotherapy.

It took the better part of a year for doctors to certify Kevin as cancer-free. When his singing voice started to return to him, making music felt urgent and vital in a new way. “Unfortunately, nothing changed with my voice!,” he jokes. “But it was all that much sweeter on the other end. The first gig back, a short solo set broadcast live on radio, it was pretty scary, the starkness of it. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go,” he says. His singing on The In Between crackles and sparks with life.

Gordon received a lot of support from the East Nashville musical community in which he is held in high regard. Aaron Lee Tasjan wrote on Instagram, “All I know is KG writes the songs that inspire a lot of us. One of our finest, no doubt.” Jim Lauderdale said simply, “He’s amazing.” 

Of the themes on The In Between, Kevin says, “The older I get, the more I’m thinking about what my friend Kenny Stinson called ‘all that old southern s.’” There are songs about his early punk rock days, his family trauma, heartbreak, raising his kids in Nashville, TN, his cancer, doing the best he could and observing how others try for the same, and yes, “all that old Southern s” is captured in The In Between, recalling Faulkner’s aphorism, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Over a half dozen albums, Gordon has been hailed by Rolling Stone who called him a “juke joint professor,” Associated Press who called his music “brilliance… mesmerizing,” and Oxford American. He’s dueted with Lucinda Williams on his recording of “Down To the Well, and his songs have been covered by Keith Richards, Irma Thomas, Levon Helm, and Todd Snider (in Hard Working Americans).

Tour Dates:

September 17-21: Nashville, TN @ AMERICANAFEST
September 26: Charlotte, NC @ River Jam 2024
October 4: Davenport, IA @ The Redstone Room at Common Chord (Songwriter Sessions)
October 5: Iowa City, IA @ The Black Angel (Solo Record Release Show)
October 6: Des Moines, IA @ Lefty’s Live Music (Trio Record Release Show)
October 9: Minneapolis, MN @ The Hook and Ladder Theater & Lounge
October 19: Nashville, TN @ The 58 at Eastside Bowl

The In Between tracklist (all songs written by Kevin Gordon unless noted):

1. Simple Things
2. Keeping My Brother Down
3. The In Between
4. Love Right
5. Tammy Cecile
6. Coming Up
7. Destiny
8. Marion
9. Catch A Ride
10. You Can’t Hurt Me No More (Kevin Gordon / Kim Richey)