Joe Hermes Country High premiere
Rock country’s hottest new independent act, Joe Hermes, is kicking off 2026 on a high note. Hot off the heels of the fiery single “A Real Good Bad One” and rowdy “Honky Tonk Feelin,’” Hermes is bringing upbeat energy in his new track “That Country High” due out February 11, 2026. Hermes’ songs are built for blasting from tailgates, dive bar jukeboxes, and pickup truck speakers. In addition to launching new music, Hermes is heading back overseas to tour throughout Europe, first with Boyzlife this February/March, then Lansdowne and Silent Hill in April.
Hermes imparts, "’That Country High’ is a fun song with all the right elements to get people singing along and dancing. When you need to wind down from all the hustle and bustle of city life and your stressful day job, it's time to grab some buds and head out to the countryside for a natural high: all those feelings I had growing up in small town country life, smelling fresh air, less noise, hanging in nature with buddies, barn parties and campfires where lasting memories and relationships were made.”
Listen to Country High with our exclusive premiere
Hermes imparts, "’That Country High’ is a fun song with all the right elements to get people singing along and dancing. When you need to wind down from all the hustle and bustle of city life and your stressful day job, it's time to grab some buds and head out to the countryside for a natural high: all those feelings I had growing up in small town country life, smelling fresh air, less noise, hanging in nature with buddies, barn parties and campfires where lasting memories and relationships were made.”
Listen to Country High with our exclusive premiere
We sat down with Joe this week while he was in Guildford to chat about his return to the UK as he opens for Boyzlife on their UK tour
You were last here in November. Did you expect to come back so quickly?
We found out a day or two before I flew over. It was confirmed about 24–48 hours before I got on the plane. I was geared up for a small pub run and then found out I’d be touring with Boyzone. I didn’t know how I fit into it, but I heard they like country music. I looked at the shows and thought, let’s go. This is the biggest tour I’ve been on. At soundcheck we were saying how easy everything felt. I’m used to fighting technical issues. Here, there’s proper production, proper crew. Even having a toilet seat and a changing room felt impressive! On the last tour I changed in the van a couple of times. Now we’ve got a proper green room instead of a broom cupboard. Back home, even in my hometown theatre, the support room is tiny, no bathroom, barely a fridge, and three floors up. So this is amazing. I’m excited to see what happens over the next few weeks. When I came over in November, I only brought 20 CDs and we sold out quickly. I could have sold 100. In the States, you’re lucky to sell a shirt. Here, people value live music. They’re present, they listen, especially to original music. That’s how I remember it growing up. That’s why I’m back. I'm with these guys for six weeks and lets hope they don't kick me off the tour before the end of it! Especially as I've got the family coming over for the last week of the tour too. My birthday is on St Patrick's Day and we actually happen to be off those three days, so we're going to hop on over to Ireland for it. This is as close to Ireland as we're going to be. So let's let's bring everybody over and enjoy it!
I'm sure the crowd is going to be very different though for this tour than what your probably used to with BoyzLife being a cross of two of the biggest boy bands in this country 20 years ago.
I might end up being the guy’s favourite. I’m leaning into more ballads for this run. We’re not playing some of the heavier recent singles like A Good Bad One even though that was only released a few months ago. I think the exact words of their agent to my agent in the emails was, just make sure he's not too rock! I don't know if I can de-rock myself or not, but I'm just going to go do me and we'll see what happens. We’ll do “Stronger Than Whiskey”, “Falling in Love with a Girl”, and the new single “Country High”. That one’s more pop and R&B influenced. I’ve never fit into a box, so why not mix it up? We’ve got honky-tonk, pop-country, and then full-on rock. We’ll play “Country High” because we released it for this tour as it's kind of that got that poppy aspect, with a little pop and a little R&B in there. I probably wouldn’t have released it if I wasn’t coming over. It’s a short 20-minute set, which I haven’t done in a long time. I used to have to stretch seven original songs into a set longer than one hour and we would be determined to not do any covers! Now I’m trying to condense everything into 20 minutes and still make an impact. I'm always interested to see how I will respond to a particular crowd and it's going to be a little feeling out process and I hope I can make that impact in those 20 minutes. We're acoustic for this run so that dials it down - The challenge will be vocally switching between these softer songs and the heavier Lansdowne material later. That’ll be five nights a week in clubs and some very intense shows; I come from that world. I used to jump into the pit from the stage! I've never fit in a box literally and physically, so here we are.
Almost immediately after this run with BoyzLife, you then go straight back on the road in the UK with Lansdowne for a further 15 shows.
I’ll go home for two weeks, then switch into rock mode. In fact, I'll probably go from being the guy who is too rock for this tour and not rock enough for that one! We’ve just written a new song with double kick drums – a blend of country and European metal. My guitarist Jerry said if anyone asks why we released it, I should say, “Because I can.” That’s part of being an artist. What's going to be hard is that the songs that we'll be singing on the first run don't have a lot of grit in them, per se, so vocally, I'm going to be strained playing these songs a lot. While the songs that we're doing with Lansdowne are very taxing and we'll be going five nights a week there - it's going to be intense.
As you said, the new single has come out just in time for this tour - and you talk about ripping up the rules as you went for a midweek release rather than the now traditional New Music Friday.
That was all Jo Hart at Hart Media. I didn't care. I was like, we can put it out Friday, last Friday, or we could put it out this Friday, but the tour starts on Thursday and I leaned into it and went with it because I can. We're in a world where artists can put out singles whenever they want. I'm fiercely independent and I don't like rules. I have that American independent outlaw spirit. Tell me your rules so I can figure out how to wait a break. When I started, everyone was just wanting me to put out singles, but I'm old school and wanted to do an album. Now, it's shifted and people don't want the volume, they want the EPs and albums again!
I guess it doesn't matter when it comes out but it must be great to have a new song out and it be something slightly different.
Yeah. Country High is a little bit on the fringe of what I've been doing, just from a stylistic standpoint, and I'm okay with it. I can already hear my rock fans, as I float a lot between rock and country, saying what is this? Then what's funny is you start getting hate messages from the guys like, oh, this is terrible. This is awful. These are just random people. Then right around the corner are the women who are like, this is awesome. This is wonderful. Like, oh, I love this. We it all fall, before it was even out, and we did it because it was a fun live song and we could get the crowd chanting the na-na-na's. It's got some of that cliché stuff in it, but people latch on to that in the moment. You don't have to work that hard at getting them to sing along because it's like, oh, it's na-na-na-na-na, right and away they go! So it'll be interesting to see what happens.
It's been great to sit down, and even better to have you in my hometown this time around
Thank you, glad we could do this and hope you enjoy the show.
You were last here in November. Did you expect to come back so quickly?
We found out a day or two before I flew over. It was confirmed about 24–48 hours before I got on the plane. I was geared up for a small pub run and then found out I’d be touring with Boyzone. I didn’t know how I fit into it, but I heard they like country music. I looked at the shows and thought, let’s go. This is the biggest tour I’ve been on. At soundcheck we were saying how easy everything felt. I’m used to fighting technical issues. Here, there’s proper production, proper crew. Even having a toilet seat and a changing room felt impressive! On the last tour I changed in the van a couple of times. Now we’ve got a proper green room instead of a broom cupboard. Back home, even in my hometown theatre, the support room is tiny, no bathroom, barely a fridge, and three floors up. So this is amazing. I’m excited to see what happens over the next few weeks. When I came over in November, I only brought 20 CDs and we sold out quickly. I could have sold 100. In the States, you’re lucky to sell a shirt. Here, people value live music. They’re present, they listen, especially to original music. That’s how I remember it growing up. That’s why I’m back. I'm with these guys for six weeks and lets hope they don't kick me off the tour before the end of it! Especially as I've got the family coming over for the last week of the tour too. My birthday is on St Patrick's Day and we actually happen to be off those three days, so we're going to hop on over to Ireland for it. This is as close to Ireland as we're going to be. So let's let's bring everybody over and enjoy it!
I'm sure the crowd is going to be very different though for this tour than what your probably used to with BoyzLife being a cross of two of the biggest boy bands in this country 20 years ago.
I might end up being the guy’s favourite. I’m leaning into more ballads for this run. We’re not playing some of the heavier recent singles like A Good Bad One even though that was only released a few months ago. I think the exact words of their agent to my agent in the emails was, just make sure he's not too rock! I don't know if I can de-rock myself or not, but I'm just going to go do me and we'll see what happens. We’ll do “Stronger Than Whiskey”, “Falling in Love with a Girl”, and the new single “Country High”. That one’s more pop and R&B influenced. I’ve never fit into a box, so why not mix it up? We’ve got honky-tonk, pop-country, and then full-on rock. We’ll play “Country High” because we released it for this tour as it's kind of that got that poppy aspect, with a little pop and a little R&B in there. I probably wouldn’t have released it if I wasn’t coming over. It’s a short 20-minute set, which I haven’t done in a long time. I used to have to stretch seven original songs into a set longer than one hour and we would be determined to not do any covers! Now I’m trying to condense everything into 20 minutes and still make an impact. I'm always interested to see how I will respond to a particular crowd and it's going to be a little feeling out process and I hope I can make that impact in those 20 minutes. We're acoustic for this run so that dials it down - The challenge will be vocally switching between these softer songs and the heavier Lansdowne material later. That’ll be five nights a week in clubs and some very intense shows; I come from that world. I used to jump into the pit from the stage! I've never fit in a box literally and physically, so here we are.
Almost immediately after this run with BoyzLife, you then go straight back on the road in the UK with Lansdowne for a further 15 shows.
I’ll go home for two weeks, then switch into rock mode. In fact, I'll probably go from being the guy who is too rock for this tour and not rock enough for that one! We’ve just written a new song with double kick drums – a blend of country and European metal. My guitarist Jerry said if anyone asks why we released it, I should say, “Because I can.” That’s part of being an artist. What's going to be hard is that the songs that we'll be singing on the first run don't have a lot of grit in them, per se, so vocally, I'm going to be strained playing these songs a lot. While the songs that we're doing with Lansdowne are very taxing and we'll be going five nights a week there - it's going to be intense.
As you said, the new single has come out just in time for this tour - and you talk about ripping up the rules as you went for a midweek release rather than the now traditional New Music Friday.
That was all Jo Hart at Hart Media. I didn't care. I was like, we can put it out Friday, last Friday, or we could put it out this Friday, but the tour starts on Thursday and I leaned into it and went with it because I can. We're in a world where artists can put out singles whenever they want. I'm fiercely independent and I don't like rules. I have that American independent outlaw spirit. Tell me your rules so I can figure out how to wait a break. When I started, everyone was just wanting me to put out singles, but I'm old school and wanted to do an album. Now, it's shifted and people don't want the volume, they want the EPs and albums again!
I guess it doesn't matter when it comes out but it must be great to have a new song out and it be something slightly different.
Yeah. Country High is a little bit on the fringe of what I've been doing, just from a stylistic standpoint, and I'm okay with it. I can already hear my rock fans, as I float a lot between rock and country, saying what is this? Then what's funny is you start getting hate messages from the guys like, oh, this is terrible. This is awful. These are just random people. Then right around the corner are the women who are like, this is awesome. This is wonderful. Like, oh, I love this. We it all fall, before it was even out, and we did it because it was a fun live song and we could get the crowd chanting the na-na-na's. It's got some of that cliché stuff in it, but people latch on to that in the moment. You don't have to work that hard at getting them to sing along because it's like, oh, it's na-na-na-na-na, right and away they go! So it'll be interesting to see what happens.
It's been great to sit down, and even better to have you in my hometown this time around
Thank you, glad we could do this and hope you enjoy the show.
