Thomas Dollbaum, it might seem, is the beneficiary of good timing. His excellent new album, Birds Of Paradise (out Friday), is composed of countryish rock songs set in the seedier corners of his native Florida. Dollbaum, 32 and currently living in New Orleans, has an MFA in poetry and sings in a conversational drawl that conveys southernness despite his lack of a pronounced accent. (He sounds a bit like Bobby Charles, an iconic scion of his adopted hometown who has a similar “guy you might meet at the dive bar” quality.) Most notably — from a commercial perspective — the new record was made with MJ Lenderman, the current leading practitioner of this kind of music in indie rock. You can hear Lenderman’s voice singing backup on the single “Coyote” (one of 2026’s best songs), where it plays the Adam Duritz role to Dollbaum’s brawny lead vox.
But Dollbaum has actually been sitting on Birds Of Paradise for years now. Three years, in fact. Not long after the release of his promising 2022 debut Wellswood — and around the time he recorded the acclaimed 2025 EP Drive All Night — Dollbaum gathered some friends and fellow travelers at a studio in Water Valley, Mississippi in 2023. Among them was Lenderman, still a year away from putting out his breakthrough Manning Fireworks, who was recruited to play drums. (He later added guitar to one song, the standout “Dozen Roses,” as well as harmonies on a handful of tracks.) Dollbaum taught the ad-hoc band his songs, and then recorded them, in just four days.
And then … he waited. A falling out with his old label over the dreaded “creative differences” put the brakes on Birds Of Paradise. Finally, the rising indie Dear Life Records — home to foundational 2020s alt-country acts Fust and Florry, as well as Lenderman’s Boat Songs – agreed to put it out, though they also had to wait a while before their slate was open.
When I asked Dollbaum — who looks ruggedly handsome with his solid jaw and beach-blonde hair over Zoom — about this seemingly interminable lag between creation and release, he is surprisingly laid back about the inconvenience. “I mean, there was a while I felt a little in the wilderness. No one really was looking at it that much. Then Dear Life had reached out, but they were just busy. They only do a certain amount of records a year,” he shrugged. “I think they planned on putting it out a year and a half ago. I was like, ‘Well, I’ve already waited almost half a year, a year, so why not just wait and put it out with some people I like?’”
Dollbaum is equally noncommittal when I propose that the delay might be a good thing, since there’s a real audience for his kind of music now. “I don’t think it hurts, at all,” he replied. “I think it also got the amount of time it needed to be digested, even by me. Took a while to get everything in order. It’s in a good place, like it’s the best version of itself it can be. It’s funny, even with Jake, when we recorded it, Manning Fireworks hadn’t even come out yet. It’s funny to see where he’s at now.”
No matter his casual demeanor, Dollbaum looks to me like a potential star, at least in the increasingly crowded scene he populates. On songs like “Florida” and “Whippits/Trailer Lights,” he exhibits a natural storytelling ability imbued with the regional specificity that’s set Lenderman and Karly Hartzman apart in that world. His work is populated by down-and-out losers and drifters in search of a break or maybe just a warm bed for the night. This immersive quality carries over to new tracks like “Big Boi,” based on a true story about two drug addicts Dollbaum inadvertently wound up taxiing around one morning on the way to a local “pill mill.”
Comparisons to Lenderman — as well as older indie troubadours like Damien Jurado, an acknowledged influence — are obvious. But Dollbaum’s music has an extra layer of sturdy, heartland rock muscle that also puts him in the Jason Isbell zone. Like Isbell, Dollbaum is an acolyte of John Prine, and that Americana strain ought to make Birds Of Paradise an object of obsession for that audience once they get around to hearing it.
We’re in this moment where any indie-rock guy who plays guitar in a country-rock vein will inevitably be likened to MJ Lenderman. Is that ever a burden or annoying for you?
Not particularly. I mean, I think the reason we probably became friends is because of similar taste and what we like writing. I don’t think really it’s that much of a coincidence. All the people who are doing this style of music know each other. Colin Miller is a good friend of mine. I met him through Jake. Friendship I knew through Jake. It’s like, after you’ve been touring, you kind of find the people that you’re like, “Oh, I like their music.” And then you want to do stuff with them. I just did a run with Fust and Merce Lemon and I love their music.
How do you know Jake?
I met him before in Asheville, right before Boat Songs was coming out. I was playing a show, and he came out because my friend Ashleigh Bryant Phillips knows him and she invited him out. Then we just talked and hung out after the show and became pretty quick friends. We were talking about doing shows and he wanted to see if I wanted to play the Boat Songs release. So, I came up and did the release show.
His backing vocals are really distinctive on the record. The way you guys harmonize is one of my favorite parts of “Coyote.”
We recorded the whole session and then he was like, “Oh, I could do harmonies on ‘Coyote’ if you want.” And then he did that, and I was like, “You should do a couple more. I think it sounds good,” and he came up with the “Pulverize” and the “Waterbird” backing vocals.
You live in New Orleans now but you’re originally from Florida. It seems like Florida looms large in your songs.
I’ve never really been able to think of New Orleans as a setting, because I’m not from here and it’s a place I feel like you should be from if you’re going to write about it. Possibly in the future I’d write about New Orleans, but I don’t really know what I would do about it. There’s so many Louisiana songs, it’s insane.
Is there something about Florida that appeals to you as a subject beyond just being from there?
I guess it always feels like the home mentally for me, where things exist.
You seem particularly drawn to the seedy side of Florida.
I mean, Florida’s just really a transient place. So, growing up there, it was always felt that way more than… I wouldn’t even say that I grew up in it, but it just always seemed around. It’s just a very transient place to me. And kind of misunderstood in a lot of ways.
As an outsider, that part of Florida seems like its own flavor of southernness. Like the South on steroids. It seems like a bastion of grifters and serial killers and outsiders making their last stand.
I don’t really think of it as the South. It’s kind of its own thing. But it does definitely have a lot of aspects of the South. Like, old Florida people are about as Southern as you can get.
When I was growing up, I wasn’t in Tampa proper. I went to school half the time in country Florida and then half the time closer to the city. It’s a weird place. Most of the people aren’t from there. Even my parents aren’t from Florida. They moved there in the ’80s. It’s kind of a place people go to start over.
It’s like a less glamorous Hollywood.
Yeah, it’s very Midwest. People always say if you’re coming down 95 on the west coast, it’s mostly New Yorkers who moved down. And then the Midwest usually populates a lot of my part of Florida. There’s a ton of people from Ohio. A lot of people from Texas. People just go there because it’s pretty nice. I think a lot of people move there thinking that they’re going to change, but they don’t really change. They’re just in a nicer setting. So, if you’re a redneck from Ohio and you moved there, it’s going to be the same life. It’s just going to be a little nicer out. Nothing really gets better unless you get better.
But at least you’re not freezing cold.
Florida’s changed so much even since I’ve moved away. It used to be really pretty reasonable to live in Tampa. It’s not anymore. It’s really expensive now. There’s been times I’ve thought about moving back just because my family’s all down there, and I visit a lot. I just love the natural world of Florida. It’s kind of subtropical but not really, but also kind of prairie, too. It’s not really like Louisiana. It’s less swampy, but it does have a swamp. I mean, it is a big swamp in some ways.
When did you start playing music?
I had some friends that were in DIY punk scenes in Tampa, and I used to go to a lot of punk shows. But the kind of music I liked playing was not really that. There wasn’t that big of a scene that I could find. Maybe it was there. I just didn’t see it.
Did you play the kind of music you do now?
Oh, no. It was nothing like that. I always liked this style of music, but I was in a reggae band for a while.
What was the reggae band like?
Pretty much straight covers. Kind of jam-bandy.
Like, Rusted Root?
More like Sublime. Very Florida vibe.
So, it was like, “The singer-songwriter storytelling stuff isn’t going to draw a crowd, so let’s play the Sublime stuff”?
Yeah. If we do covers, people will show up.
What songwriters inspired you?
Growing up, I really loved Dylan, and then I really got into John Prine. And then when I got a little older, it was Damien Jurado, and then all the ’90s guys when I was in early college or late high school. I listened to some Neil Young. I wasn’t as into Neil when I was younger as I am now. I’ve grown to appreciate Neil more, as I’ve gotten older.
You also remind me a little — because of the “seedy character” subject matter — of Zevon and Todd Snider.
Yeah, I really love Zevon. I haven’t listened to Todd Snider. I need to dig into him. I think I would like it.
Your song “Big Boi” sits in that lane. That’s based on a true story, right?
Yeah, I met these people out at a Waffle House. Their car was broken down, and then I just spent an insane morning with them. I was just trying to help them out, but I got deeper and deeper into hanging out with them. I spent six hours with them. They had two kids in the back, and they had dogs. I took them to the AutoZone and a couple other spots. And then they were like, “Can you take me to the pharmacy?” We ended up going to a pill mill, and they came out with a ton of drugs, and then I was like, ” I’m in a situation now.” But it ended up being fine.
What’s a pill mill?
In Florida, they had laws where you could buy as many opiates as you want. If you wanted to get 400 hydrocodone for some reason, they would just sign off. There were no laws against it. So, people would drive from the northeast, buy a thousand pills, and then drive home. There would be these pharmacies that would pop up in gas stations. But all they were really doing was selling hydrocodone and Roxies.
Do you think you were, consciously or not, looking for material in that situation?
I mean, I’ve always been pretty open to people. I used to give people rides a lot when I was younger. I don’t really do that as much anymore. But there was a while in high school where I would give people rides, just take them to the bus stop or something.
Those experiences really pay off in your songwriting.
I don’t think I thought of it that way. I think that you end up gathering stuff over time. But that’s just part of meeting people.
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