A Thousand Horses Looking to ‘Bring It Up a Notch’ With Sophomore Album

A Thousand Horses -- the group made up of Michael Hobby, Zach Brown, Graham DeLoach and Bill Satcher -- recently released the title track of and third single from their freshman album, 2015's Southernality, but the guys tell The Boot that they have begun "piecing together" their sophomore record.

"We’ve got a bunch of songs we’ve written, and we’re continuing to write more. Right now, we’re in the process of thinking really hard where we want to go and what we want the next record to be, and bringing it up a notch," Hobby explains. With a laugh, Brown adds, "A Thousand Horses 2.0 -- that’s what we’re starting to call it."

Although their new music will differ from Southernality, Hobby insists that their fans will approve of the finish product, which, of course, "will definitely have elements of Southern rock."

"That's who we are," Hobby says. "Maybe it's a little bigger, a little more aggressive [this time around]."

So far, that sound has been working for them: A Thousand Horses' debut single, "Smoke," hit No. 1, and their second single, "(This Ain't No) Drunk Dial," landed in the Top 30. "Southernality," meanwhile, was released with the lazy days of summer in mind.

"We wanted to put something out going into the summer that had good tempo and [was] a good party song for the summer that had some rocking guitars and a big ol’ chorus," notes Hobby, who wrote the track with Corey Crowder and Neil Mason. "We were in a writing room one day, and I threw out 'southernality,' when I combined the words 'southern' and 'personality' ... The song’s more or less about being proud of who you are and where you’re from."

A Thousand Horses will have to continue to juggle working on their new record with their time on the road: After serving as the opening act on Jason Aldean's 2016 We Were Here Tour, the country quartet has been asked to continue as one of Aldean's Six String Circus Tour openers.

"This is our first time playing these big arena stages, so it took us a couple weekends to get our bearings and figure out how to work this whole deal and the big stage. [But now] we're rocking it," DeLoach admits. "It’s awesome, because we feel like [Aldean's music is] rocking country, so in a way, he paved the way a little bit with that rocking sound on country radio, so it’s awesome to be a part of that tour."

A list of all of A Thousand Horses upcoming concerts is available on their website. Southernality is available for download on iTunes.