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Sometimes change is so gradual that it barely registers, and sometimes it’s like slamming into a brick wall. Ask The Cadillac Three: in 2020 the Nashville trio of Jaren Johnston, Neil Mason, and Kelby Ray released a pair of albums in Country Fuzz and Tabasco & Sweet Tea, then entered a season of dramatic upheaval that left them reeling.

“We put out 31 songs in one year. It was like, let’s give people a breather. Let’s give us a breather,” Johnston says. “We were coming off COVID and then my dad passed away. It’s a whole different life now. Talk about having some shit to write about.”

The ACM-nominated group’s sixth studio album, The Years Go Fast, is the product of coming through those trials and emerging on the other side — battle-scarred, a little older, a little wiser, and more willing to be vulnerable. It’s expansive in sound, reflective of the way The Cadillac Three continue to tinker with their swaggering brand of country-rock, but it still sounds like only the three of them can.

“This record does have a lot of growth, a lot of hurt and heartbreak,” says Mason, the group’s drummer. “We are a little more grown up now, but we’re still doing the same thing we were doing in the beginning.”

The Years Go Fast is a statement about big change, but it’s also about the ways friendship, love, and family are anchors when everything starts to fall apart. The group’s three members were high school friends in Nashville and have played in bands together for nearly 20 years. While making the album, Drummer Neil shared an old photo of the three of them loading their gear to social media with a caption that read “the years go fast,” a reference to an older song by the Jane Shermans that they all liked. They ended up repurposing that song, “Young and Hungry,” by adding the story of Jaren and his wife to the verses. The result is a triumphant, exhilarating banger that connects The Cadillac Three of yore to the present. 

The painful loss of Johnston’s father, former Grand Ole Opry drummer Jerry Ray Johnston, looms large over The Years Go Fast. “This Town Is a Ghost” points out the visual reminders that appear everywhere now that he’s gone. The deeply moving “Pistols on the Levee,” which closes the album, recalls memories of visiting Louisiana with his dad when he was younger, and how he’s continuing that tradition with his own child. “’Pistols’ is so cool,” Johnston says. “It hits me so hard because I know my dad would’ve loved that song.”

TC3 fans are used to hearing the band being brash and loud, which they do on tunes like “Hillbilly,” which features Elvie Shane and Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor. But now the trio is also finding the power in blending their volume with vulnerability. “You can only do this for so long without showing that side,” Johnston says. “Everybody’s human. Everybody has hurt. Everybody loves somebody.”

Johnston lets his guard down and explores love and partnership in several songs. “Love Like War,” a grungy number that shifts into a crushingly heavy outro, was written late at night after Johnston and his wife, Evyn, had been arguing. “At the time I wrote it, we were going nuts,” Johnston says. “I was a mess, just depressed. It was the middle of COVID and I had a kid in kindergarten. I was having anxiety over that. It was so much. You put two people who’ve been together for 20 years into that blender, you get a fight.” 
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