CHRIS VINCENT TAKES THE FRENCH QUARTER BY THE HORNS WITH “THE QUARTER TAPES, Vol. 1”
Four-song EPs. One legendary neighborhood. No filters, no shortcuts, no artificial anything. Chris Vincent brings the raw, unvarnished reality of the French Quarter to life with a new series of recordings beginning Friday, December 11th with Dirty South.
NEW ORLEANS, LA — In an era when authenticity is increasingly manufactured, New Orleans songwriter and slide guitar master Chris Vincent is doing things the old-fashioned way: living the stories, writing the songs, and playing every note himself.
Following the critical success of his acclaimed 2025 album Good Crook, Vincent announces The Quarter Tapes, an ongoing series of four-song EPs inspired by, written in, and recorded entirely in the French Quarter, where he lives. It’s a project rooted in the neighborhood’s peculiar magic, questionable characters, questionable life choices, and elegant decline.
The appetite for Vincent’s uncompromising songwriting and unmistakable slide guitar has grown considerably since 2025’s Good Crook established him as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary roots, blues, and Americana. But don’t expect a polished rehash or a calculated attempt to repeat past success. The Quarter Tapes digs deeper into the world that has always informed Vincent’s music: a world where the beautiful and the broken routinely share the same streets.
The first single, Dirty South, arrives December 11th, and wastes little time getting to the point. It’s a story Vincent knows well as a French Quarter resident: New Orleans has a remarkable talent for making its more unseemly attractions look irresistible. The trouble is that some attractions come with teeth, and, sooner or later, the bill comes due.
Vincent drives the point home in the chorus:
“We’ve been in the wind so long
We got blisters on our thumbs
Something wicked this way comes.”
It’s a song steeped in regret, bad decisions, and the peculiar wisdom that comes from having lived long and hard enough to recognize the inevitable. Vincent, a recovering alcoholic, knows this tale all too well.
And then there’s the guitar… Much has been said about Vincent’s genre-defying approach to the slide guitar as far more than an accompaniment machine. In his hands, the guitar is a second voice, a foil, and a very equal, very effective partner. Vincent’s longtime fascination with large-bodied Gibson archtops continues on The Quarter Tapes, this time with an exceptionally rare 1948 Gibson Super 300, one of only an estimated 150 still in existence. A formidable instrument with the subtlety of a whisper and the potential force of a freight train, it provides the perfect foil for Vincent’s singular guitar approach and sharply observant songwriting. As Vincent puts it, the instrument is essentially “a grand piano masquerading as a guitar.”
Vincent has never been particularly interested in musical shortcuts, studio cosmetics, or manufactured credibility. His work is handmade, hand-played, and hand-written — music that comes from actual human experience, not an algorithm trained to imitate it. In a musical landscape increasingly crowded with artificial voices and synthetic expressions of authenticity, Chris Vincent remains decidedly, unapologetically human.
Four different collections of songs are planned throughout 2027, each offering another glimpse into the characters, contradictions, and peculiar rhythms of the French Quarter. If Good Crook announced Vincent’s arrival as a major force in modern roots music, The Quarter Tapes promises to make the case that he’s only getting started.
The French Quarter has always had plenty of stories. Vincent just happens to know how to tell them well.
“DIRTY SOUTH” — THE FIRST SINGLE FROM THE QUARTER TAPES — AVAILABLE DECEMBER 11, 2026.
SoundCloud Link:
https://on.soundcloud.com/ybLWg7yO6HW6XW66Io
‘Dirty South”-Chris Vincent, Live in New Orleans 11.1.26
Management: Suz Holmes, Apalachee Productions 850-628-9655
Booking: Mike Paz, ThePazGroup504-382-0343
Website: ChrisVincentNewOrleans.com
Instagram: Chris Vincent – Instagram
