‘Missouri’ is a song about learning to live with loss, a quiet country lament that slowly finds its legs in a driving roots-rock sound. The most significant change is in the story it tells as much as in the music.
There’s a certain poignancy in a song that you carry with you for years and which takes on a different meaning as you go through life. “Missouri” by Joseph Turner & The Dudes of Hazard is one of those songs. It was written very early on in Turner’s career and is very much rooted in the experience of losing people you love when you’re young and the questions that arise when life takes a turn you didn’t see coming. It’s about how grief can alter your beliefs, how it can change the way you see the world and how it can leave you in a state of limbo between wanting to go on and wanting to just give up. It was released on the 23rd of October 2026 and it’s a country and roots rock song that really does the job of conveying those complex emotions in a very authentic and personal way. The opening is very restrained. It’s a slow waltz, the rhythm is very gentle and Turner’s acoustic guitar is the bed of the song. It’s the sound of someone looking back, trying to make sense of things that may have been very hard to process at the time. Keenan Schuck’s pedal steel is excellent here. It’s very expressive and adds a real sense of melancholy to the track. It’s a very classic country sound and it doesn’t quite go over the top in its sentimentality. There’s a lot of space around the vocal and the guitar and the song just unfolds as it should. The writing is also about the conflict that can exist when you’re trying to find your way after loss. Turner uses the metaphor of an angel and a demon to represent the two sides of the argument that can be present at such a time. One side is the desire to move forward, to believe in a better future. The other side is the weight of the pain that can hold you back. That’s the tension that the song has. It’s not just a song about people you’ve lost. It’s about the person who is left behind and the choices they have to make when the future no longer looks the way it did before. The song recognises that finding your way forward isn’t always easy.
Around the three minute mark the track completely changes. The gentle country waltz is gone and we’re now in a much faster 4/4 with a far more energetic, bluesy roots rock arrangement. The guitars are much grittier, the rhythm is on the move and it’s a completely different proposition. It almost sounds as if a second song has entered the recording, but it all makes sense in the context of the narrative. The first section is all about the introspection of the situation, the second half is about the change of attitude that can come with time, experience and the decision to go on. That shift is probably the track’s most defining characteristic in that the structure of the music itself is the reflection of the emotional arc of the narrator. The second half of the song also brings a very different musical personality to it. Turner has mentioned drawing on Sturgill Simpson and Anders Osborne for that more driving section, whilst the opening is very much in the tradition of the classic country story tellers (John Prine, George Strait) with a touch of the blues (Bonnie Raitt). Those references are useful in explaining how “Missouri” moves so effectively between the traditional country sound and a more rough and ready alternative roots rock approach. It’s not an attempt to be trendy at all. It’s part of the story and it gives the song a character that would be very hard to achieve if it had stayed in one musical style for the whole of its run time.
The instrumental detail is just as important. Turner’s acoustic was recorded in one take (no editing at all) so that the performance came through as it was. Schuck recorded his pedal steel separately and Wes “the Weasel” van Werkhoven (Dutch harmonica player) came in at the end. His harmonica adds another layer of bluesy character and helps the latter half of the song settle into its more up tempo mode. The song has a very distinct instrumental identity, which is never at the expense of the story. There’s a story behind the title too. Turner actually started with a bit of wordplay and wrote the song before he’d ever set foot in Missouri. After he did go to Missouri and saw the state for himself he came back to the lyrics and made a few changes. It’s another example of the song evolving as his own life experience evolved. That’s the whole point really. You can create something and not fully understand what it means at the time and only later in life do you have the perspective to see it in a different light. It was recorded in the Netherlands and the US, mixed at Tracksuit Studios in the Netherlands and mastered by Sam Moses in Nashville. It’s a song which brings together a number of different musical voices around a very personal story. Joseph Turner & The Dudes of Hazard deliver a song that is reflective without being melancholy and is energetic without being over the top. The journey from a slow country ballad to a full on roots rock groove is a perfect musical representation of that shift in perspective. “Missouri” is ultimately about accepting that life doesn’t always go the way you planned and that you can still keep moving forward even if some of the questions remain unanswered.
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