Texas Music News — July 13, 2026
Randy Travis just released “Fish On,” the first single from his next album. It’s his first batch of original songs in 18 years. The song dropped July 10, right after months of quiet. It doesn’t sound like a comeback stitched together by software. It sounds like Travis, because it is Travis. Producers built the album from tapes he recorded before his 2013 stroke, back when the voice was still his own. So longtime producer Kyle Lehning pulled those tapes from the vault. Then he remixed and remastered them, note by note.
Now Travis calls Tioga, Texas, home. He and his wife Mary settled into the Chrysalis Ranch there back in 2010. That same tiny Grayson County town also raised singing cowboy Gene Autry a century earlier. So Travis now rides the same dirt roads a Texas music legend once called home.
Travis announced the album on July 7 during a visit to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. He played some of the songs for the kids before the world ever heard them. Afterward, Mary spoke on his behalf. “Gratitude and appreciation welled up as emotions I didn’t expect,” Travis said. “Stories were shared about a particular song’s impact on their lives. I hope these dusted-off songs from the vault touch folks the same old way.”
Randy Travis’s Voice Never Really Left the Room
Unlike Travis’s AI-assisted releases from 2024, “Fish On” carries no digital reconstruction. Travis sang every note himself, years before the stroke took his voice away. The song tells a simple story: a love of fishing, patience, and knowing what makes you happy. To celebrate, Travis and Mary hid 40 collectible “Randy Travis bobbers” across Nashville. Fans who found one got an early listen to the track.
Eighteen years is a long wait. But some voices are worth it.
Details at Whiskey Riff
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