Smith & Wesley, the sibling duo made up of brothers Scott and Todd Smith, are back with a brand-new album, Greetings From the Land of Y’all. The 12-song project, their first on BFD / Audium Nashville,  combines the different styles of music they love, from country to southern rock and more, along with their own unique and distinctive sound.

“If you go and look through all of our albums, from our very first album, three albums ago, we don’t let the grass grow under our feet,” Todd told Everything Nash. “So once a single is done, we’re always putting another single out there. And so we felt we wanted to do the same this way.”

Smith & Wesley released “Listen to the Radio” before dropping “Land of Y’all,” which became the inspiration for the title of their new record.

“Todd I think actually came up with the idea that the album cover will be a postcard, and it says ‘Greetings from the Land of Y’all,'” Scott recalled. “It all worked out great and it made its way to be released as a single and even a title track. So for those that still like to get the actual CD itself, the CD cover is like an old school postcard, and on the back of it, it’s like the back of the postcard. It says, ‘Wish you were here.’

“It has peach steps, because we’re from Georgia,” he added. “And all the titles to the songs are handwritten down, like you would send somebody a postcard when you’re on vacation.”

Smith & Wesley have been making a name for themselves ever since their debut album, Choices & Chances, was released in 2015, followed by For Better or For Worse in 2018. With a series of successful singles, and a busy touring schedule (when not sidelined because of COVID-19), the duo earned the title of MusicRow’s 2020 Independent Artist of the Year — and a lot of industry respect in the process.

“The cool thing about it is, as an independent artist, sometimes a songwriter may not want to take a chance on you because they want their songs cut by a major label artists, and they want to make sure it’s going to get played on the radio,” Todd explained. “Particularly after winning the MusicRow Independent Artist of the Year this year, I think that pretty well proved that we’re not going anywhere and people can depend that our music is going to get played on the radio.”

Greetings From the Land of Y’all includes several songs written by the duo, along with songs by Phil O’Donnell, Chris Cavanaugh, Bernie Nelson, Jacob Lyda and more. Since the beginning, Scott and Todd have written both together and separately. Although they surprisingly almost always agree on which songs to include on their records, Greetings From the Land of Y’all marks the first time the brothers didn’t write their record themselves.

“We had one song from the last album that made it as a single,” Todd said. “We were encouraged last album, but we already pretty much had a catalog of songs. And we felt like we were already kind of down the road and we were ready to record, and didn’t want to spend the time going through the process of picking songs, but we did this album, and I’m glad we did.”

“Some were more traditional and some were more modern and contemporary, but it was easy to sing songs and believe in the ones they wrote,” he added. “So we were happy to include them.”

Smith & Wesley planned on being out on tour for most of 2020. While those plans got derailed because of the coronavirus pandemic, their determination to perform in front of their fans is as strong as ever.

“We were hoping that, being the Independent Artist of the Year, signing with our new label … we were ready, and then COVID hit,” Todd said. “So now we’re just waiting to have everything moved. I think there’s some discussions, and we’ve talked to other artists who just now may be getting out and playing some small venues under the CDC guidelines, and giving it a try. But we hope everything gets back to normal and there’s a pent-up demand of everybody wanting to go see some music, and we can hit the road.”

Greetings From the Land of Y’all is available for purchase at Smith & Wesley’s website.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Absolute Publicity / Alyssa Cox