On the 35th Anniversary of it's original release, Country Music Hall of Fame member Randy Travis has announced a remastered version of his triple-platinum, genre-defining debut album with the addition of never-before-heard tracks. Storms of Life (35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) will be released September 24 with pre-order beginning August 27. The album will include remastered versions of all ten original tracks plus three unreleased songs found in the vault.
Storms of Life, along with Travis, is credited with redefining the country music genre back to its roots. His first of five consecutive No. 1 albums, it lit the spark that paved the way for a neotraditional generation of artists like Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Clint Black and many more. It has sold more than 3 million copies, earned Randy Travis induction into the Grand Ole Opry and helped him win the Academy of Country Music's Top New Male Vocalist, Top Male Vocalist, Album of the Year and Single of the Year ("On The Other Hand") as well as the Country Music Association's Horizon Award. The album was released in 1986 by Warner Bros. Records and the 35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition will be released by Warner Music Nashville.
"I love the timeless lyrics and the traditional country instruments, like steel guitar, banjo, piano, fiddle," Travis said, when asked about the pivotal album, adding, "it was music I believed in, that told a story I wanted to share. We were fortunate to have a large catalog of songs to choose from that were more traditional. At the time, people and radio really weren't playing this kind of music. Most people were recording more of an urban cowboy sound, so I got to choose from the best of the best, cream of the crop. It was exciting for all of us to get back to our roots."
"As a collection, [the album is] as about as quintessential an example of hard country music as one is likely to find on the contemporary market. [The tracks] are like little late-night bar stool confessions of heartbreak and emotional dislocation - tales of mislaid pasts, misled lives and the overwhelming pain of life itself." - Bob Allen,
The Washington Post
Bob Barnett with Rochester's WBEE told
Billboard in 2016, "right in the heart of the mid-'80s down cycle, the country format began to re-energize again on the success of Storms and a fresh, new look. An unknown 27-year-old, hatless, clean-shaven, good-looking country singer helped kick the format out of its pop-country love affair down a more organic, pure, traditional path."
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