Jamey Johnson photo courtesy of UMG Nashville.

Jamey Johnson’s 2008 album That Lonesome Song was a winner, earning nominations for Album of the Year in both the CMA Awards and the Grammys.

The track that drew the most attention from the album, “In Color,” owed its storyline to a black-and-white photograph, and Jamey’s next album will likely carry that theme forward, though it’s unclear if Jamey intended to link the two projects. He told Alabama outlet Our Prattville that the new album, titled The Guitar Song, should be out in June or July. And it’s taken on an interesting shape.

“There will be a white album and a black album,” he said. “There will be more explanations inside the album jackets as to why it is done this way. But basically it is a little tale that revolves around a yin yang. As it gets further along you see how the opening situation evolves into some of these other situations. Each song … affects the next, or kind of sets up the next.”

It’s unclear whether the project will be come out as a single two-disc album, two simultaneously released CDs or a pair of releases staggered several months apart. The latter approach is being taken by at least two artists on rival labels, Blake Shelton and Jo Dee Messina. GACTV.com asked for clarification from Mercury Records, but at press time had not received a response.

Either way, the yin-yang, dual-disc approach serves Jamey’s creative theme for The Guitar Song.

“It gets dark and dismal [on the black album] and then it shows how on the white album everything gets better and better until it can’t get any better,” he said. “It just keeps going full circle. Each album bleeds into the other without stopping, and so if you put both albums on and hit the repeat button they play in perpetuity. They never stop.”

In the meantime, Jamey’s on tap for the inaugural Country Throwdown Tour, a multi-stage package designed after the highly successful Vans Warped rock tour. Hitting the road with him are Montgomery Gentry, Jack Ingram, Little Big Town, the Eli Young Band, Eric Church, the Lost Trailers, Ryan Bingham, Jonathan Singleton, Heidi Newfield and Emily West. And a few others, too. It launches May 14 in Tampa.

ShareThis