Exclusive: Hear George Jones’ New Song “The Honky Tonk Downstairs,” the First Single From ‘The Lost Nashville Sessions’

Nancy Jones remembers her husband, George Jones, walking around singing “The Honky Tonk Downstairs” all the time–especially when he’d had too much to drink.

“‘Lord have mercy that song, you’re wearing me out on it,’” Nancy told her husband. “I do remember him going around singing it quite a bit, and he loved the song.”

“The Honky Tonk Downstairs” is from Jones’ new album The Lost Nashville Sessions, which will be released Nov. 15. Jones died April 26, 2013, and the 16-song album is comprised of songs recorded in one or two takes specifically for radio in the 1970s. Country Rewind Records President and Executive Producer Thomas Gramuglia found the boxed master tapes and gave them to producer Paul Martin, who removed the announcements, bumped up the audio quality, and added some instrumentation.

“The Honky Tonk Downstairs” is the album’s first single, and it will be out Friday. Hearing her husband’s voice on the song again moved Nancy.

“I’m like, ‘Wow, thank you,’” she said. “He didn’t drink before he died. I was so proud of that. That ‘Honky Tonk Downstairs’ was absolutely wonderful.”

Other songs on the album include: “Window Up Above,” “The Race Is On,” “The Grand Tour,” “She Thinks I Still Care,” and “Walk Through The World With Me.”

Nancy said executives told her they found these songs and asked her permission to release them. She was supportive of the project but had questions. Where did they find the songs? What is it? When she heard it was recordings Jones made for radio, she thought they would be special.

“George was comfortable in there because he wasn’t trying to do it in the studio where you had to stop and talk and stop and do this and redo that and wait for this,” she said. “He just sung the song straight on, and he was comfortable with it. It’s totally different than what George would’ve done in the studio.”

Nancy said her husband was just having fun with it, and that’s why “it’s totally different.”

“We call it The Lost Nashville Sessions because he was comfortable with it,” Nancy explained. “They’re songs that you’ve heard before, but you’ve never heard them sung this way. And being George Jones, instead of like, ‘Oh, darn, I made that mistake. Let me redo that.’ It wasn’t none of that. It was just straight through.”

When Nancy heard the songs for the first time, she cried.

“I thought it was wonderful,” she said. “It brings tears to my eyes, for sure. But I thought it was wonderful that they put this together. Paul put it together and made it just so close to what George would have wanted himself. It made me feel good.”

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