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Sterling Drake has always had a taste for adventure.  

“I left home at 17 without any idea where I’d end up,” he explains. “All I knew was that if I held onto my dreams, they’d lead me where I was meant to be.”  

With the release of The Shape I’m In, Drake’s remarkable debut, it’s clear the young troubadour is right where he belongs. Recorded in Nashville with Grammy-winning Icelandic musician Thorleifur Davidsson (Sierra Ferrell, KALEO), the collection stands as a captivating reflection on purpose and growth, on the journeys that take us away and the revelations that bring us home. The writing is profoundly existential, balancing the emotional and the intellectual in equal measure as it grapples with the sum total of love and heartbreak that make us who we are, and the performances are raw and revealing to match, captured live and direct to tape with an all-star cast of players. The result is a warm, lived-in sound that’s timeless and inviting even as it remains loose and rough around the edges, a poignant, intensely honest work that draws on country, folk, Celtic, and bluegrass traditions to forge something entirely its own. 

“I grew up with my feet in two worlds,” says Drake, who was born in Florida but spent much his youth on the move. “I was introduced to the worlds of livestock and country music through my grandfather, but just as much of my childhood experience was suburbia, skateboarding, and playing drums in punk bands.” 

After striking out on his own, Drake found ways to bring all of his passions together, pulling from his work with horses and cattle in Montana, his travels as a touring musician, and his time spent writing and performing in Nashville to craft an enthralling sound. In 2021, he began releasing a series of singles and EPs that prompted Rolling Stone to praise his “rough-hewn aesthetics,” and in 2024, he took home Male Honky Tonk Artist of the Year honors at the annual Ameripolitan Awards in Austin. 

“I spent a lot of time studying honky tonk, and I cut my teeth playing bars and dance halls,” Drake explains. “I have the utmost respect for that music, and I come to it from a place of deep reverence and understanding.” 

The Shape I’m In finds Drake stretching beyond his honky tonk roots, though, expanding his sonic palette with lush, harmonically adventurous arrangements as indebted to Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zandt as Merle Haggard and Roger Miller.  

“I knew Thor was the guy to produce this album because he’d been playing in my band for a while,” Drake explains. “He really understood all the different genres I was trying to bring together, and he helped me assemble a mix of seasoned veterans and hungry newcomers who could bring the music to life in the studio.” 

That organic approach is plain to hear on the album, which opens with the waltzing title track. Tender and aching, the song catalogues the laundry list of thoughts and hopes and fears that define us, with, Drake concluding, “It’s the time we’ve lost / With the ones we love / The pain we cause / And the stars above / How do I explain it / It’s the shape I’m in.” It’s a line that turns up multiple times throughout the record, which folds back in on itself at the end with the bittersweet “Reprise.” 

“My favorite records are complete, start-to-finish experiences, and it was important to me that this album had an arc and told a story,” Drake explains. “I wanted to make something you could sink your teeth into.” 

The story Drake tells here is a personal one, but it speaks to our broader humanity, to the fundamental search for purpose and belonging that defines us. The bluesy “Calusa” reckons with what it means to lose the place you come from; the lilting “Ozark Rose” laments the love a rambler inevitably leaves behind; and the dreamy ‘She Means Everything To Me” finds comfort in a partner who sticks around even when the going gets tough. “Lord I lost it in the fall and she was there through it all,” Drake sings. “When the snow fell we were bare and she didn't seem to care.” 

Drake knows all too well what that kind of unwavering support can mean in the face of struggle, which is why he hopes to use the album as a tool to support ranchers facing the loss of their property and natural resources while promoting environmental responsibility through land stewardship. 

“Ranchers face unique mental health challenges that are often invisible to the rest of society,” he reflects. “They work tirelessly to feed and sustain others, yet often struggle silently with the weight of their own burdens.” 

 Drake writes about it on the stirring “Worthy Of The Name (feat. Brennen Leigh),” which reflects on the responsibility—to your family, your land, your animals—that comes with calling yourself a cowboy. The accompanying video features a PSA with resources for ranchers in need of assistance with mental health or substance abuse.  

“I’ve found songs to be particularly effective tools in reaching people that might not otherwise be ready to have these kinds of conversations,” Drake explains. “Ranchers tend to have their guard up, but there’s a sense of trust and vulnerability that comes with music that can really affect change in people.” 

Vulnerability is at the core of Drake’s performances on the album. The devastating “Neon Lights & Cheap Perfume” hits rock bottom watching life pass by through the haze of another smokey bar, while the heart wrenching ballad “The Best Worst Thing” learns to find gratitude in the wreckage of a painful breakup, and a stripped-down interpretation of “House of the Rising Sun” brings Drake back full circle to the first song his father ever taught him on guitar (a song, of course, about roamers and the ones they leave behind). But it’s perhaps the breezy “In My Dreams” that best captures Drake as he is today, rolling down the highway, satisfied with the journey itself and the meaning he finds in the pursuit of what matters most. “Life can be so hard to climb / Without a solitary dime,” he sings. “Now I’ve found love where I can’t hide / And I’m scared of what I’ll find / It’s the wine it’s my pride / It’s the way I’ve treated me / But I’ll find the answers wrapped up in my dreams.” 

For a dreamer like Sterling Drake, the adventure’s only just getting started.