Cole Swindell Plans ‘Down Home Sessions’ EP, Winter Tour

Cole Swindell

2014 might be winding down, but Warner Bros. Nashville artist and CMA New Artist of the Year nominee Cole Swindell isn’t slowing down anytime soon. After opening shows for Luke Bryan, Swindell will gear up for Jason Aldean’s 2015 Burn It Down Tour by embarking on his own 19-city, headlining club tour this winter. Swindell’s Down Home Tour runs Nov. 13 through Dec. 20. Venues include Joe’s Bar in Chicago, Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth, Texas, Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Okla., and House of Blues in North Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Swindell will also release a five-song digital Down Home Sessions EP, produced by Michael Carter, and featuring co-writes with Bryan, Ashley Gorley, Brandon Kinney, and more. The project will release Nov. 17 on Warner Bros. Records. He says the EP is designed to be an outlet for his songwriting and a way to give fans new music between full-length albums.

“When I was getting to make my album, I knew from the songs we had, that we weren’t going to be able to put them all on the album,” said Swindell. “A couple are songs that fans heard me play live and wondered, ‘Why didn’t that make the album?’ You can only pick so many, so the fact that my label was behind me and supporting me, letting me put out a few new songs that I feel like people should have heard on the first album—and then some are special to me.”

“The Way You’re Loving Me Now,” penned by Swindell, Carter, and Bryan, almost found a home on one of Bryan’s albums. “We wrote it a couple of years ago and always thought Luke was going to put it on [one of his albums] and I don’t know what happened with that song.”

Gorley co-wrote another cut, titled “Kiss,” from the EP. “I’m excited about having a song with Ashley Gorley who is one of my favorite writers. He came out on the road a few months ago and we hammered out five songs. I’m excited for y’all to hear the whole thing.”

Swindell, an artist and songwriter in equal measure, was named one of MusicRow‘s Breakthrough Songwriter of the Year honorees for 2014. He has penned chart-topping songs for Thomas Rhett, (“Get Me Some of That”), Florida Georgia Line (“This Is How We Roll”) and Bryan (“Roller Coaster”), as well as his own No. 1 songs “Chillin’ It” and “Hope You Get Lonely Tonight.”

“I don’t want songs I’ve written to start being forgotten about, and I feel that fans like getting new music,” he said. “As much as I love to write, I hope we’ll always be able to give them new music when we have albums out. I want to hopefully do that every year, give the fans new music and then go out and play the clubs which I started playing in. I’ve been on some crazy stages this year with some big artists, but to get to go back and play clubs, kind of how I started, and be there in the face of the fans, that’s going to be fun.”