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The Connells are one of North Carolina’s most beloved and successful indie rock bands. Despite the two decades since their last recording, The Connells never quit performing, and Mike Connell never stopped writing songs. Now in 2021, The Connells are ready to release their latest LP Steadman's Wake on September 24th, featuring eight new songs and 3 re-recorded versions of previously-released demos which originally appeared on 2001’s Old-School Dropouts EP. Steadman’s Wake is also the first Connells album to feature two newest members, guitarist Mike Ayers and drummer Rob Ladd (who have been in the lineup since 2002 and 2012, respectively), and the band’s first record with Mike Connell taking a more prominent role as vocalist.

After first forming in Chapel Hill at the University of North Carolina in 1984, The Connells made their album debut a year later with Darker Days, which was released on Elvis Costello's Demon Records in the UK and the band's own Black Park Records in the U.S. The record brought the group to wide acclaim amidst the emergent wave of southern “college rock” bands, alongside contemporaries like R.E.M. and Pylon. Their 1987 Mitch Easter-produced album Boylan Heights established The Connells as college-radio favorites, and they went on to work with producers including Gary Smith (Pixies, Billy Bragg), Hugh Jones (Echo & the Bunnymen, Modern English) and Lou Giordano (Goo Goo Dolls, Bob Mould) on subsequent albums.

Over the course of their career, three Connells albums have made the Billboard 200 charts in the United States, but their biggest commercial success came overseas in 1995 with “’74- ’75,” a pensive and moody ballad from the Giordano-produced LP Ring which reached the top-10 in 11 European countries in the mid-1990s (including No. 1 in Sweden, Norway and Germany). The song’s evocative time-traveling video, juxtaposing then-and-now photos of alumni from The Connells’ hometown Broughton High School, also earned a cult following with fans making their own video versions.

Dating back to benefit shows they played in 1990 for Harvey Gant when he was running against controversial Republican U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, The Connells have been no strangers to political activism over the years. Steadman’s Wake’s title track takes a definitive stance in reference to war, the opioid crisis, the white-supremacist rioting that roiled Charlottesville, VA in 2017 and again at the US Capital at the start of 2021.

“We’ve had some oblique socio-political bits here and there over the years,” says Mike Connell. “But never as direct as this. It seems like it’s time. It’s scary, where we still stand in this country with issues of race. Of the 11 songs on the record, the clear consensus within the band was that “Steadman’s Wake” best reflected the band’s take on the temper of the times and best represented the ‘spirit’ of the record.”

The Steadman's Wake recording sessions took place at Durham’s Overdub Lane and Fidelitorium Recordings, the Kernersville, N.C., studio run by North Carolina Music Hall of Famer Mitch Easter (R.E.M., Game Theory, Let’s Active). John Plymale (Meat Puppets, Superchunk,Squirrel Nut Zippers) produced Steadman’s Wake with cameo guest Robert Sledge (Ben Folds Five, Surrender Human). Steadman's Wake was originally set for release in 2020 but was held up due to the pandemic, a hard delay for a band that had waited so long for this followup.

“It feels a little more grown-up than we’ve done in the past - more upbeat and not quite as cynical. Every record we’ve ever made, we’ve thought it was the last one. Maybe this really will be it,” says MacMillan, “Then again, as long as we’re still playing, chances are that Mike will still be writing songs. We’ll see.”