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Sam Hunt’s new song and Johnny Cash-inspired music video set the stage for his forthcoming EP that’s set to make its debut soon, the Georgia-born country star revealed in an announcement on Monday morning (March 25). Hunt’s EP, Locked Up, is due on April 5.
Hunt wrote the collection’s title track with Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne, Jerry Flowers. It was produced by Zach Crowell. Hunt nodded to Cash in the music video he premiered for “Locked Up” on Friday (March 22). “Locked Up” recreates Cash’s Folsom Prison performance in the late 1960s. The video also features Hunt’s wife, Hannah Lee Fowler, who was pregnant with the couple’s second child at the time. Baby No. 2, son Lowry Lee, arrived in October 2023. He joined big sister Lucy Louise, who turns 2 in May.
Locked Up will include the title track in addition to Hunt's hit single “Outskirts” on the four-track EP:
- Locked Up (Sam Hunt, Zach Crowell, Jerry Flowers, Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne)
- Country House (Sam Hunt, Ross Copperman, Michael Lotten, Josh Osborne)
- Last Hurrah (Luke Laird, Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne)
- Outskirts (Sam Hunt, Zach Crowell, Jerry Flowers, Josh Osborne)
“We found a really cool old prison in East Tennessee, and we had this idea originally to recreate the Johnny Cash Folsom Prison concert that he did back in the day and dressed up in all black, a suit, and I got a bunch of local guys to come out and dress up as inmates and had a really good time with it, sort of a period piece idea, I guess you could call it. I don’t know if I did Johnny Cash justice,” Hunt said, via his record label. “I doubt I did, but I enjoyed making the video and had my family out there with me and met a lot of cool folks who came out to help us with this video, so that was one of the more fun video experiences I’ve had.
“I wanted to write a song called ‘Locked Up.’ I had no idea about what it may be about, although I have had a few run-ins with the law in my lifetime,” said the Georgia-born artist, who will deliver the debut live performance of “Locked Up” during the 2024 CMT Music Awards on April 7. “My producer was playing me some music, he had built some tracks and was playing through a few songs, and I was looking at my phone, and I saw the title in the songs. The music sounded like the title, which is always a good start, and I just started singing that chorus. I think I filled in, 30-40 percent of the lyric in one take.”