Gothic Americana · Blues Rock

Wrong Turns
& Whiskey

Songs from the long way around.

The Sound

Gothic Americana at the root — with the weight of whiskey-drenched Texas Blues rising out of the Mississippi Delta, and the structure of something that takes its time. Baritone vocals, resonator guitar, kick drum that sounds like a verdict. Story-songs built for people who actually listen.

"We're a Whiskey Blues Rock act. Put us on whatever stage needs energy at 9 p.m. We'll handle the rest."
— Grady Cole

The Story

A bartender in Rock Hill asked Grady how he ended up playing music in that bar on a Tuesday night.

Frankie · The red bass

The answer was two sentences and a worldview: "Wrong turns and whiskey, man. That's the whole story."

The name stuck before anyone had a chance to vote on it. As for the songs — those came from somewhere else entirely. Frankie writes them. The band carries them. That's always been the arrangement.

The Band

Grady Beaumont Cole

Lead Vocals · Rhythm Guitar

York, SC. Came up on country radio and a burned CD that rewired him overnight — 3 Doors Down, Fuel, Creed, loud and aching and real in a way country radio never quite was to him. Picked up a second-hand Epiphone at a Rock Hill pawn shop and never looked back. The reason the set runs long. The reason nobody leaves.

Dexter "Dex" Pruitt

Lead Guitar

Grew up in Tega Cay, SC — the son of a piano teacher and a car dealer, which explains both his ear for tone and his ability to hold a room without trying. SRV disciple and tone purist: the most opinionated man in any room containing amplifiers. He can walk you through the sonic differences between a '63 and a '65 Stratocaster pickup for forty-five uninterrupted minutes and make you feel like you asked. His battered Strat is named Margaret. He won't say why. He and Grady have had the same creative argument since the first rehearsal. Neither one has won. The music is probably better for it.

Steven "Frankie" Frank

Bass

Quiet at load-in. Enormous in the room. At sixteen he paid twenty-five dollars for a used bass from a shop that traded in things people outgrew — school band castoffs, basement relics, a trumpet nobody ever got around to learning. His dad helped him strip it down and rebuild it right: new electronics, new life. Then he spotted the short-scale red bass on the wall and traded up. That red bass is still with him. He writes the songs. The band carries them.

Corey "Crank" Fink

Drums

From Gaffney, SC — yes, home of the Peachoid — with the quiet, no-nonsense toughness of a man who grew up fixing things with his hands. The nickname arrived early: part mechanic (he earns his living as an auto tech off Cherry Road in Rock Hill), part descriptor (once he gets cranking behind the kit, the room changes temperature). Offstage he is measured, practical, disarmingly calm. Behind the kit he is an entirely different person. He hits with a controlled aggression that makes you feel the kick drum in your sternum from twenty feet away. Never missed a soundcheck. Never complained about loading out.

The Music

DEBUT: The band's debut, The Long Way Around, is two-part conceptually linked set of EPs representing the journey from going through the motions of a false self, to embracing an imperfect history where scars show authentic growth.

The lead single, The Man I Wore—released on July 10, 2026—opens the door for Part One.

The Long Way Around, Part One: The Man I Wore

EP 1

Wind & Fire

Written by Steven when he was seventeen. A parable about a man who said the same thing almost every day: The wind can blow out a flame, but it can't blow out a fire. He meant it as an argument for going all the way. A breath of air kills a match. That same wind accelerates a wildfire. The headwinds that stop you were never the fire's problem — only the flame's. The album opens here because this is where the philosophy lives. Everything else follows from it.
Land From Where I Come

Also written at seventeen. Written in a room full of people who already had all the answers — who said so, who meant it, and who punished the questions. This is a song about what you can't stop noticing even when you're told not to look. About the gap between what you're assigned to believe and what you can't help knowing. That gap doesn't close. It becomes a song.
Learn to Be a Man

Written in 1987. A boy's question to himself, to his father, to the long road ahead: Am I enough? The lyrics are unchanged from the original. The weight they carry is entirely different. It is no longer a question.
The Man I Wore Lead Single

The valley floor. A song about going through the motions for so long that the motions become the man — answering to a name that doesn't quite fit, watching yourself from somewhere overhead. It doesn't explain itself. It doesn't have to.
Watchman's Wage

About the ones who hold the walls up so others don't have to. The quiet caregivers. The men who absorb what nobody else can carry. About the toll that takes, and the silence it gets paid in.
Invisible

Where Part One ends. Not with resolution — with recognition. The moment of finally naming what you've been doing for years. This is where the tape used to flip. The album pauses here. So should you.

The Long Way Around, Part Two: Weathered Not Wasted

EP 2

Shadow in Darkness

The morning after Invisible. Still in it. Eyes open.
Overwhelmed

The weight before it lifts. When the light is visible but not yet reachable.
Sundial at Night

A sundial is useless in the dark, yet it remains a monument to the sun. The weight of waiting for a clarity that only existed in a previous season.
Static

The turn. The signal coming through the noise. A song about the music itself — about all the years it sat silent, and what happens when you stop tolerating the interference. The signal was always there.
Weathered Not Wasted

The title came first. Then the song. Then the clear anchor for Part 2. The band name shows up in the bridge — unplanned, the way the right things arrive. The resilience anthem. The one that knows you made it.
Driftwood

The last song. Not an ending — a becoming. Cinematic. Earned. Something in me that had gone, came back to life. That's the whole record in one line.

Listen

The lead single The Man I Wore is out now — available on all major streaming platforms and stores.

Listen Now

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Wrong Turns& Whiskey

Grady Beaumont Cole

Dexter "Dex" Pruitt

Steven "Frankie" Frank

Corey "Crank" Fink

Wrong Turns
& Whiskey