Andy Frasco has never been shy about documenting the messier parts of being human — the burnout, the emotional backslides, the pressure to stay upbeat when you’re anything but. His 2024 album Growing Pains leaned directly into that tension, reframing Frasco not just as the life-of-the-party bandleader but as a songwriter staring down the realities underneath the chaos. Now he’s expanding that story.
On January 23, Frasco will release Growing Pains (Deluxe), a revamped edition of his most personal record to date. The expanded tracklist adds six bonus tracks, including the brand-new single “Heavy Heart,” out now. The song sits firmly in Frasco’s vulnerable lane — more confession than carnival — and acts as the emotional hinge of the reissue.
“Heavy Heart is about the people who are always putting others before themselves,” Frasco says. “They suppress their sadness because they don’t want to be a burden… You gotta let the past go to finally move on.”
The track deepens the album’s ongoing conversation about resilience, grief, and what it takes to stay present when your emotional wiring would rather drag you backwards.
Tumbleweed & JJ Grey
“Heavy Heart” follows last month’s “Tumbleweed,” a dusty, rootsy collaboration with powerhouse blues-rock vocalist JJ Grey. Co-written with Frasco’s longtime friend Kris Lager while touring, the song compares the rhythms of musician life — the highs, the lows, and the complete absurdity of it all — to a tumbleweed tumbling wherever the wind decides. JJ Grey, unsurprisingly, goes full gravel-throated preacher on his verse.
“When my boy Frasco hollered about singing on a song of his I said hell yeah!” Grey said. “When I heard the song I fell in love with it! Janky goodness!!”
The deluxe edition also includes four intimate acoustic versions recorded live at Nashville’s Second Nature Vintage, giving some of Growing Pains’ most tender tracks a stripped-down, lived-in feel.
One standout that returns on the expanded record is “Life Is Easy” — arguably the most ambitious thing Frasco has ever released. The song is a folk-protest satire featuring a completely unhinged all-star lineup: Billy Strings, Steve Poltz, Daniel Donato, and Phish’s Mike Gordon. The result sounds like a rowdy back-alley bluegrass gathering where everyone is both joking and deadly serious at the same time.
Growing Pains (Deluxe) ultimately fills in the edges of the original album — heartbreak, healing, relapse, relief — offering a larger version of the existential honesty Frasco has been leaning into for years. Where early Frasco albums were built for barrooms and late-night chaos, the deluxe edition feels like the morning after: clear-eyed, a little bruised, and oddly hopeful.
Frasco will support the release with a heavy run of winter and spring tour dates, starting December 12 at Atlanta’s Variety Playhouse and continuing through a two-night New Year’s Eve stand at Brooklyn Bowl, a West Coast sweep, and festival stops in Mexico, Colorado, Maryland, New Hampshire, and FloydFest.
Growing Pains (Deluxe) is out January 23, 2026.
“Heavy Heart” and “Tumbleweed” are streaming everywhere now.
