Apex Manor lets us into the studio for his “Where My Mind Goes” lyric video

Ahead of this week’s shows supporting Strand of Oaks, Ross Flournoy is giving us another glimpse under the hood of Heartbreak City, the brand-new Apex Manor album (out May 31 worldwide). “Where My Mind Goes” arrives today coupled with a lyric video containing photos culled from the lightning-speed recording sessions that spawned the record.

Ahead of this week’s shows supporting Strand of Oaks, Ross Flournoy is giving us another glimpse under the hood of Heartbreak City, the brand-new Apex Manor album (out May 31 worldwide). “Where My Mind Goes” arrives today coupled with a lyric video containing photos culled from the lightning-speed recording sessions that spawned the record.

After the release of Apex Manor’s 2011 debut The Year of Magical Drinking, Flournoy hit a wall and decided to move home to Memphis, TN, and check into rehab with plans to head back to Los Angeles upon its completion. However, his father—who Flournoy playfully calls his “sober Sherpa”—had just started a homemade pimento cheese business that was quickly taking off in the local farmers markets and grocery stores. “My dad showed me how it was possible to live without drinking—which was an impossibility in my mind—and I started helping out with the business,” says Flournoy, who ended up staying in Memphis for two and a half years. “It was the most profound shift in my life, and I never saw it coming.”

Even with his newfound sobriety and the success of the pimento cheese business taking up a lot of his time and energy, Flournoy never stopped making music while in Memphis. He got work composing instrumental music, scoring a web series, and he even wrote the theme song for the CNN daily news show The Lead with Jake Tapper. The music-without-lyrics part came easy for Flournoy, and the anonymity was an enticing draw as he learned to navigate a life without alcohol.

Finally, in 2016, two years after moving back to Los Angeles and scoring a couple of movies and a short film, Flournoy wrote his first new Apex Manor song since The Year of Magical Drinking. “It took me five or six years to learn how to rewrite songs, or at least how to write them sober. But in a span of nine months, I wrote something like 35 songs,” smiles Flournoy. Heartbreak City required less than two weeks of studio time to complete.

Apex Manor is on the road now as a touring member of Strand of Oaks, and will be opening a run of those dates beginning Wednesday. Heartbreak City is available for pre-order on CD or limited-edition blood red Peak Vinyl in the Merge store, or wherever records are sold.

Apex Manor on tour:
May 01 St. Paul, MN – Turf Club*
May 02 Madison, WI – High Noon Saloon*
May 03 Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall*
May 04 Indianapolis, IN – The Hi-Fi*
May 06 Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom*
May 07 Pittsburgh, PA – Club Cafe*
May 30 Los Angeles, CA – Bootleg Theater (album release show)
Jul 27 Carrboro, NC (MRG30)
* w/ Strand of Oaks