LOCASHs Three Minutes of Positivity New Single Has The Duo Talkin Bout Its Next Radio Run. Period.

“I hate punctuation.”

LOCASH co-founder Preston Brust, should he read this story, will probably dislike the previous sentence — since periods and quotation marks are not his thing.

“I will go back and erase punctuation out of my texts a lot, just kind of leaving a fingerprint of how I talk,” he says.

Brust’s unusual take on commas and colons is behind the clean title presentation of the duo’s latest single, “Talkin Bout,” which took a bit of work to create. One of their Galaxy Label Group employees originally typed it as “Talking About,” then – after he corrected her – put apostrophes in place of the “g” and second “a.” He had her remove those, too.

“She must’ve hit me up five times,” Brust notes. “I was really kind about it. I wrote back, ‘Talkin Bout.’ If it was up to me, the ‘T’ wouldn’t be capitalized and the ‘B’ wouldn’t be either.”

“Talkin Bout,” released to country radio via PlayMPE on July 29, is two minutes and 37 seconds of sweet midtempo affirmation, supported by a burning production and hooky guitar riff.

“Talkin” has sat in LOCASH’s possession for nearly three years since they created it, with the duo’s Chris Lucas checking in via Zoom on Oct. 6, 2023, as Brust and songwriter Nate Kenyon (“Dear Big City,” “Life With You”) met up to write at the home studio of Combustion Music writer-producer Blake Bollinger (“This Heart,” “Caught Up in the Country”).

Kenyon started running through about a half-dozen song ideas, but they stopped him when he brought up “Talkin Bout” – or, as he was probably spelling it, “Talkin’ ‘Bout” – for a deep dive on the idea.

“I saw the blueprint for it pretty easily,” Kenyon recalls. It felt “like a radio-hit kind of deal, like, ‘If I’m talking about this, it’s this.’ ‘This is this.’ ‘But if I’m talkin’ ‘bout a girl, I’m talkin’ ‘bout you.’ They loved it.”

Bollinger brought up a percussive track he’d previously sketched out, and they launched into the process, which evolved rather quickly. The early ‘Talkin Bout’ images addressed baseball and George Strait, and the song’s first seven examples – including cold beer, dirt roads and blue-collar – all pointed to an unpretentious, small-town lifestyle.

“Talkin’ ‘bout” started nearly every one of the first eight lines, and they kept that pattern going during the chorus. Even though it wasn’t all that different from the verse, they managed to telegraph to the listener that the sing-along part had arrived by spelling it out.

“When that Y-O-U hits, even though it’s Y-O-U, it feels more like 3-2-1, like it’s a countdown,” Kenyon notes. “That’s when that chorus hits. You do feel it.”

They raised the Y-O-U to another level at the chorus’ E-N-D: “If I’m talkin’ ‘bout a girl, I’m talkin’ ‘bout you.”

“All I want to talk about is you – that’s how it pays off at the chorus,” Lucas says. “It really is just a quick love song.”

As they rolled out of that chorus into the second verse, they dropped the small-town talkin’-‘bout topics and leaned into kisses and irresistibility.

“Once she’s brought into the subject in the chorus, I think it’s like, ‘Okay, now let’s just stay there,’” Brust says. “Let’s keep it all about her. That’s what she’s gonna want to hear. That’s what we want to talk about.”

The only spot where the “talkin’ ‘bout” if-then pattern shifted into a more subtle treatment came during the bridge, where the lyrics turn to future possibilities.

“It’s talking about the serious stuff at that point: ‘Talkin’ ‘bout you, me,’ ‘talkin’ ‘bout maybe have a couple babies’ with a wraparound porch and a swing,” Lucas notes. “That’s the dream, you know – everybody’s dream when they find their girl.”

Bollinger finished out the demo, putting a staccato guitar riff on the track, but it didn’t go anywhere for a year or two. After they wrote more songs on the LOCASH tour bus during a later concert run, Bollinger sent the duo those demos on Dropbox and tucked in a few older demos he still liked, including “Talkin Bout.”

Both singers thought it was a standout, and they hired Bollinger and Sam Bergeson (Graham Barham, Teddy Swims) to produce it among four songs. The original demo had been recorded in B-flat, but since several LOCASH hits were in C, the duo had them record in the higher key. Bergeson and Bollinger focused on making it sound like a hit.

“We kind of knew that that one had a shot,” Bergeson says. “We really just tried to make it as ‘country radio’ … as we could. We just tried to pull out all the stops and make sure that you could press ‘play’ at any point and be fun and high-energy.”

Bollinger played some of the keyboard parts and provided some of the programming, but also served as a sounding board as Bergeson played everything else. That included a revision of the guitar riff that required interlocking parts. “He adds all kinds of layers that are just very subtly mixed in to add twang and thickness,” Bollinger says. “He’s a bit of a savant at his craft, and we came up with all the ideas together.”

The bulk of the drums were programmed, though Bergeson enlisted his cousin, engineer Nathan Krauss, to record real hi-hats and cymbals to fill the higher frequencies. As it came together, Lucas had second thoughts about the pitch. After all that work in the key of C, he decided they should bring it back to B-flat, which would cost more money. That caught the producers off guard.

“I think they thought I was punking them,” Brust recalls. “You can’t just push a button, but I said, ‘Man, let’s do it. Let’s start over again and get it.’”

Lucas’ voice worked in C from the producers’ perspective, but they agreed that the lower key made more sense. “They did pull it off,” Bollinger says. “It just sort of felt like the magic was going back to the original B-flat.”

Some of the sounds – particular the percussion – didn’t need to be re-recorded, but they re-cut the parts that couldn’t be re-pitched digitally, and Bergeson played some baritone guitars on the chorus to make that section a little tougher.

Backing vocalist Trey Keller tacked on some harmonies and came up with a few additional parts, particularly a recurring “talkin’ ‘bout you” chant that’s tucked in under the guitar riff after each chorus. Mixing engineer Jim Cooley made a few adjustments so that the chorus popped even harder. “He really made it explode,” Bergeson says. “It’s just a nice little three minutes of positivity.”

Both LOCASH members have seen their pre-teen daughters react enthusiastically over “Talkin Bout,” and the duo shares that excitement, comparing it to a 2024 single they took to No. 1 on Country Airplay.

“It’s been sitting like ‘Hometown Home’ to me,” Lucas says. “I knew ‘Hometown Home’ had something special. I felt it. Preston felt it, and we were just like, ‘Hey, man, we cannot wait to get this song out.’ I have that same feeling for ‘Talkin Bout.’”

That puts an exclamation mark on this chapter in their career; punctuation be damned.