Brooklyn country artist Dougie Pool is finishing up work on the follow-up to his fantastic 2020 debut album, Freelancer's Blues. It was written in 2021 and he made it with Katie Von Schleicher (Purple Mountains, New Pornographers) and Nate Mendelsohn (Market). While full details haven't been shared, Dougie has just given us an early taste with "High School Gym," a bittersweet song that pushes urban ennui to the side a bit in favor of thoughtful and heartfelt emotion, as he looks back on all the people he's lost in his life.
“When somebody that you love dies, they might visit you in your dreams," says Poole. "They can ask you things or tell you things. The conversations continue, and feel perfectly real. Little gifts your brain can give itself. I've asked around and I think it's a somewhat common thing when you lose someone, and so I wanted to write 'High School Gym' about a dream I have sometimes. Everybody I know who is dead gathered together in my high school gym, a place that disappeared a long time ago.”