Release: Michael McDermott - Flowers From The Graveyard

Artiest/Band: Michael McDermott Album: Flowers From The Graveyard Release: August 21 2026 Label: Pauper Sky Records. Format:  CD/LP/Digital Genre: Singer-Songwriter Some artists take decades to arrive. Chicago singer-songwriter Michael McDermott has been arriving - album after album, song after song - for thirty-plus years. With Flowers From The Graveyard, his new full-length on Pauper Sky Records arriving August 21, 2026, the arrival may finally be undeniable.

 

Flowers From The Graveyard, the latest album by Michael McDermott, which is scheduled for release on August 21 2026 on Pauper Sky Records.

Some artists take decades to arrive. Chicago singer-songwriter Michael McDermott has been arriving - album after album, song after song - for thirty-plus years. With Flowers From The Graveyard, his new full-length on Pauper Sky Records arriving August 21, 2026, the arrival may finally be undeniable.

McDermott has long occupied a peculiar place in American music: extravagantly praised - by Stephen King, by the Washington Post, by Hollywood Reporter - and perpetually on the verge. Raised on the dual gospel of early Dylan and the Stones, Tom Waits and the Who, Woody Guthrie and Van Morrison, he has never made a record that fits neatly into a marketing category. That restless refusal to be contained is, of course, precisely what makes him essential.

Flowers From The Graveyard collects 11 self-penned songs that move fluidly between anthemic rock and bruised introspection, between political fury and hard-won philosophical calm. It is the work of a songwriter who has, as he puts it, stopped trying to control what was never his to control.

McDermott recorded and released his previous dual albums - the acoustic Lighthouse on the Shore and the electric East Jesus - simultaneously on his own Pauper Sky Records, a bold statement of creative independence that drew on a rich cast of collaborators including Heather Lynne Horton, Will Kimbrough, and John Deaderick. Where those companion records explored the twin poles of his musical personality, Flowers From The Graveyard synthesizes them - electric and acoustic, tender and fierce, personal and political - into a single urgent statement.

The Washington Post once wrote that McDermott “may prove to be one of his generation’s greatest talents.” The operative word in that sentence is may. With Flowers From The Graveyard, the conditional tense is no longer required. His time has come.

“Michael McDermott is one of the best songwriters in the world.” Stephen King

“Despair never sounded so good.” The Hollywood Reporter

“(McDermott’s) writing is so powerful and the images so striking…so gutsy and authoritative…exhilarating and passionate” American Songwriter

“If you haven’t discovered McDermott by now, you need to as he’s one of the best songwriters we have.” Glide magazine

The first single from the album ‘The Best We Get’ is available now (see video link below) and Michael will be touring Europe from late September - see current itinerary further below.

Tracklist:

1. The Best We Get | 2. Always A Ways Away | 3. Nobody | 4. But For The Little Moments | 5. Johnny Sparrow And The Sunset Girl  | 6. Old Feelings | 7. The Struggle Makes You Stronger | 8. The Lords Of Lincoln Park | 9. The Future | 10. Flowers From The Graveyard | 11. Ain’t Life Beautiful

KEY TRACKS 

‘The Best We Get’

A rocker that splits the difference between Del Amitri’s melodic precision and Tom Petty’s driving American heartland authority. Big chords, bigger hooks - McDermott reminding anyone who needs reminding that he can write a song that owns a room.

‘Nobody’

A loser anthem for the ages. Its chorus -“I’m just a nobody, nobody knows”  - arrives not as a lament but as a celebration, a paradoxical freedom found in anonymity. McDermott has always known how to turn humility into something that sounds like liberation.

‘Always A Ways Away’

Broad-shouldered and unhurried, this is McDermott at his most assured - a song that carries weight without straining under it. The kind of track that sounds like it has always existed.

‘But For The Little Moments’

The album’s most contemplative offering, referencing a quiet scene in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories as a call to set aside lofty aspirations for something more Stoic and present. McDermott has spoken plainly about what inspired it:

“I think what sent my life into a tailspin for so long was my frustration in trying to control that which wasn’t in my power. It’s in the silence and little moments now, where I find the most meaning.”

‘The Future’

McDermott has never shied from saying what he means, and here he says it at full volume. An anthem in the truest sense, built for collective voices, its chorus a blunt and unapologetic declaration of democratic principle. Not a song that asks permission.

Here we don’t bow to any King - So let the mother***ing freedom ring. Here we don’t bow to any king and certainly not a clown from Queens.

MICHAEL MCDERMOTT · AUTUMN 2026 EUROPEAN TOUR

SEPTEMBER

• Wed 30               Geneva                       Venue TBC

OCTOBER

• Oct 1 - 11           Italy                           dates and locations TBC
• Tue 13                Leiden, NL                   Q-bus
• Thu15                 Bennekom, NL            Live Stage Marnix
• Sat 17                Utrecht, NL                 Ramblin Roots Festival : TivoliVredenburg
• Sun 18               Vlaardingen, NL          De Vulcaan

For further information or interview requests please contact Geraint or Deb Jones at G Promo PR

• Email: gpromo@btinternet.com • Web: www.gpromopr.com

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