As they celebrate a decade together, The Band Camino—Jeffery Jordan, Garrison Burgess, and Spencer Stewart—returns to mark another milestone with the release of their third studio album, Never Always, available now.
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Co-written by the Nashville-based trio and produced by Burgess, NeverAlways feels more authentic, according to the guys, than previous works, allowing them to go back to the beginning and “just make songs we liked.”
“I feel like a lot of our differences are what, combined, make The Band Camino and the way each of us create, the way we create together, it’s a unique and a blessing of a situation to be in, is just being able to understand where each other’s differences are coming from and they meet up and create what you hear, which is cool,” Burgess tells American Songwriter.
With a more personal feel than ever, NeverAlways doesn’t disappoint, capturing the growth and evolution the group has undergone from their early days. The eleven-track album pairs the band with collaborators Captain Cuts, Jonah Shy, Gabe Simon, Seth Ennis, Jordan Schmidt, and others. Songs like “Baggy Jeans,” “What You Can’t Have,” and “Hates Me Yet” break down the inner emotions that one deals with in relationships that are falling apart, while the album as a whole takes the listener on an emotional and vulnerable ride that they will surely relate to.
“‘NeverAlways’ is a reflection of our past couple of years as a band—sonically and emotionally,” the band says. “We wrote these songs in a period of intense change, but making it felt like returning to ourselves in a way—like growing up and becoming a kid again all at once. It’s an album about getting caught up in extremes—life, death, never, and always. But finally understanding that real living, the good stuff, happens somewhere in between.”
American Songwriter chatted with the band via Zoom to get their take on the new album, their upcoming tour, and how the album represents the band today.
AS: Your third LP, NeverAlways, is out July 25. Tell us what we will hear from you on this album.
Jeffery Jordan: It’s a reflection of where we are right now and our taste. It’s definitely a bit of a departure in a way from the last album.
AS: In what way?
JJ: It feels more authentic than the last album. And maybe that’s just because when I listened to the last album that we made two or three years ago, and now I’m not relating to it as much as I am to these songs. Now this feels more authentic. I don’t know if it’s because we’re always changing and growing or because I think this album is coming from a more authentic place of not chasing something or not feeling like we’re supposed to be something.
Growing into a band and growing into having a platform and having a fan base has been the most amazing thing. But it’s also like you start to feel this pressure, and you start to feel the fans are expecting something from you. You’ve built this sound. You have your team, you have your label, you have all these voices around you. Some of them are gassing you up, some of them are singing your praises, some of them are like, “I don’t like these songs.” There are all these things, and we only have each other, and we’re trying to tune that out in a way, but also be aware of how it’s coming across.
The last album was hitting a peak; we were trying to navigate all these voices and opinions, and this album, we shut that out a lot. We just said, ‘We’re going to go away and get in a room with us three and just make a bunch of songs that we like.’ Getting back to the root, we felt the fan base from the beginning by just making songs that we liked, that we thought were cool, and that we would want to listen to, and it worked for us, so let’s just get back to that and make something that we are proud of and that we relate to. Something that makes us feel, and hopefully makes people feel that in the music.
AS: Would you say this album is more representative of you than anything you’ve done previously?
Spencer Stewart: That’s a tough question because I want to say yes to that, but also that would be discrediting all of our previous work, not discrediting, but saying that’s not a part of us or what we were trying to do at the time. It’s more a reflection of who we actually are, instead of who we’re trying to be, maybe is a better way to put it. It’s a lot more personal, even just sonically, it feels a lot more personal.
Garrison Burgess: It’s very evident on the record that we took some stabs, but we were comfortable taking some of those stabs, and that was the goal. It’s like, ‘Hey, do we feel good about taking it in this direction or this direction, whichever way we want to go sonically or whether it’s lyrically?’ And I do feel like, hopefully, to me, it feels like the three of us felt very confident in the way that it was like, ‘Hey, let’s just try this and figure it out.’ And then it made the record.
SS: I feel like it was a lot more exploration on this record, a lot more in every sense of it sonically. And we had Garrison produce some of the songs on the record, which, before this, we only ever had one producer. It was nice to explore in that way.
(Photo by Jimmy Fontaine)
AS: Let’s talk about the title of the album: Never Always. What is the significance of the meaning behind that?
JJ: There is a song called “Never and Always,” and it’s actually a quote that I misheard or misremembered. I was listening to an audiobook, and I was half-listening, and I heard someone basically say the phrase “Never and always,” and I was doing something else.
It sparked something in my mind that took me on this journey of extremes and how in a way never and always are a little bit like, when someone says, “You always do that.” That’s not a helpful thing a lot of times, or “You never do this.” It’s like these extremes that people use when they’re arguing.
The way I thought the quote was, is that they like to live their life in never and always. If I’m deciding if I want to invest my time into something, do I want to do this never or always? If I’m investing in a relationship, is this never or always? I don’t want it to be sometimes. I’m investing in a new hobby and I was thinking about, should I play video games or should I go jogging? Do I probably always want to play video games? No, but I always want to, hopefully go jogging, maybe yeah. It’s this thought of not being lukewarm about things and being sure of things.
Turns out that they were not saying that at all in this quote. I went back and listened to it and it was like I completely misheard it, but it inspired a song that’s called “Never and Always.” The song is not on the album, but the concept of never and always we took out the “and”—NeverAlways, because I do feel like it sums up the album about all these extremes and this space that we live in between never existing and also life is not eternal, it’s not permanent, but we are here for this split time. It’s like this space between never and always where everything happens our whole lives.
AS: One of the songs that stood out to me on the album was Baggy Pants.” Can you share the story behind that song and take us into the writer’s room?
JJ: We were in Los Angeles. That was our first-ever co-write in Los Angeles. We’ve always just written songs in Nashville and kept to our circle here, but in the sense of just trying new things. We did a couple of trips out to LA, and we wrote with Captain Cuts, who are amazing songwriters. They have a bunch of big songs, but I had this idea going into the session. I was looking for clothes online and ordering some baggy jeans, which have been back in style in a way. I have a couple of outrageously baggy pairs of jeans that look pretty stupid, but they’re just fun, and they’re fun to wear on stage. They just bounce around.
But just thinking about how someone wearing something so trendy and breaking up with you is just funny. The idea of pairing in the same way of never and always, and all these juxtapositions and these extremes on the album—the extreme of something super casual, a super trendy outfit, and then also getting your heart broken. It was just this idea of someone casually dumping you, and it was like, put on your baggy jeans and order an açai bowl and break your heart.
SS: It’s weirdly relatable, even if it’s never actually happened to you. It’s setting heartbreak in 2025. That would be the irony behind it all. The idea that someone with a skin-tight T-shirt and a pair of jeans that are eight sizes too big for them walks in and says, “Oh, so you’re just going to ruin my life really quick.”
AS: You guys have a big tour coming up, NeverAlways Tour, kicking off in October. What does a Band Camino show look like?
JJ: A big old rock show.
We always pride ourselves on our live show. It’s what we’ve built our business around in a way. We are really proud of our shows and the fact that people show up. It’s been two years since we’ve done a real market headline tour. We’re just putting it up and seeing the reception, and that the tickets are moving, and people are coming. We’re like, ‘Let’s go.’ It’s so sick. We’re just really grateful to be able to go out, hitting the road every year, and people keep showing up.
It looks probably very emotive for us, and it’s a release and it’s a celebration, it’s always a check-in of like, “Wow, here we are again. We’re still doing this with each other.” And how fun it is. It always blows me away how real our fan base is in a human sense. Seeing people and how much the songs mean to them. And I’m just ready to get back out there.
The Band Camino kicks off their NeverAlways Tour on October 10 in Atlanta, Georgia, with stops in Los Angeles and New York, followed by legs in the UK, Europe, and Australia/New Zealand, which continue through February 2026.
Listen to NeverAlways HERE
The Band Camino Tour Dates:
Oct 10, 2025 – Atlanta, GA – Coca-Cola Roxy
Oct 11, 2025 – Columbia, SC – Township Auditorium
Oct 13, 2025 – Orlando, FL – House of Blues Orlando
Oct 14, 2025 – St. Petersburg, FL – Jannus Live
Oct 16, 2025 – Birmingham, AL – Avondale Brewing Company
Oct 18, 2025 – Austin, TX – ACL Live at The Moody Theater
Oct 19, 2025 – Dallas, TX – South Side Ballroom
Oct 21, 2025 – Tempe, AZ – Marquee Theatre
Oct 23, 2025 – Hollywood, CA – Hollywood Palladium
Oct 26, 2025 – Salt Lake City, UT – Rockwell at The Complex
Oct 28, 2025 – Denver, CO – Fillmore Auditorium
Oct 30, 2025 – Kansas City, MO – The Midland Theatre
Nov 1, 2025 – Minneapolis, MN – The Fillmore Minneapolis – SOLD OUT
Nov 2, 2025 – Madison, WI – The Sylvee
Nov 4, 2025 – St. Louis, MO – The Pageant
Nov 5, 2025 – Indianapolis, IN – Egyptian Room at Old National Centre
Nov 7, 2025 – Pittsburgh, PA – Stage AE
Nov 8, 2025 – Grand Rapids, MI – GLC Live at 20 Monroe
Nov 9, 2025 – Toronto, ON – HISTORY
Nov 11, 2025 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount
Nov 13, 2025 – Washington, DC – The Anthem
Nov 15, 2025 – Boston, MA – The MGM Music Hall at Fenway
Nov 16, 2025 – Philadelphia, PA – The Fillmore Philadelphia
Nov 18, 2025 – Louisville, KY – Old Forester’s Paristown Hall
Nov 20, 2025 – Chicago, IL – The Salt Shed
Nov 21, 2025 – Columbus, OH – KEMBA Live!
Nov 22, 2025 – Nashville, TN – The Pinnacle
UK + EU
Dec 9, 2025 – Glasgow, United Kingdom – The Garage
Dec 10, 2025 – Manchester, United Kingdom – New Century Hall
Dec 12, 2025 – London, United Kingdom – O2 Forum Kentish Town
Dec 14, 2025 – Haarlem, Netherlands – Patronaat
Dec 16, 2025 – Cologne, Germany – Kantine
Dec 17, 2025 – Berlin, Germany – Columbia Theater
NZ + AU
Feb 19, 2026 – Auckland, New Zealand – The Powerstation
Feb 21, 2026 – Sydney, Australia – Enmore Theatre
Feb 22, 2026 – Melbourne, Australia – Forum
Feb 24, 2026 – Brisbane, Australia – The Tivoli
Feb 26, 2026 – Fremantle, Australia – Freo Social
Photo by Erika Goldring/Getty Images
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