Rust Belt Town

Releasing a new solo album may not be the most conventional way to begin retirement, but for Dan Eubanks, that path has worked well. In November 2025, bassist Eubanks played his last official show with Special Consensus after more than twelve years with the band. The parting was more than amicable, with Eubanks and the bandmates describing their relationship as more like family than business partners. 

After years on the road, though, Eubanks was ready to spend more time at home—back in St. Louis after almost twenty years in Nashville. He is also increasing his teaching responsibilities, both private lessons and adjunct teaching for the University of Missouri, St. Louis—teaching jazz bass students and directing one of the school’s jazz combos. He had also been teaching bass classes and a bluegrass business course at East Tennessee State University, which he began remotely during the pandemic.

While semi-retirement gives him more time for leisure, Eubanks is by no means stepping away from making music. On March 27, he released a solo album, Rust Belt Town, with Common Loon Records, an indie label out of Dothan, Alabama. 

All but one of the songs on Rust Belt Town are originals Eubanks has written over the years. The opening track, “Empty Field,” was a co-write with Stephen Daly and Bob Rea, and the others he wrote alone, with the exception of an instrumental version of “Shenandoah,” which closes the album. Eubanks said, “As a bass soloist, I wanted to add a track that featured the bass.  I don’t just do walking bass when I do a solo like a typical traditional bluegrass bass because I’m a jazz player. I wanted this song to be the bookend, a kind of ending that said, ‘Here’s my bass personality coming through.’ But it’s also folky and earthy. It’s not jazz; it’s not bluegrass. It’s focused somewhere in between all of those things, which I think is me.” Eubanks also played Celtic guitar on the track.
This album serves up plenty of bluegrass, such as the title song and first single, “Rust Belt Town” and “Empty Fields”, and some straight-out barroom country and honky-tonk blues—“Strap Me to This Bar Stool” and “Full Cheater’s Moon.” Eubanks opens “Stop and Stare” with a tongue-in-cheek warning and a disclaimer that “no hunting dogs or humans were injured in the singing of this song.”

These are songs that acknowledge a changing world. “Empty Fields,” sung from the perspective of the land itself, describes the aftermath of an abandoned farm where no rain falls upon my face to feed the crops that once were sown. Likewise, the title cut “Rust Belt Town” paints a picture of a town where men have returned from Vietnam, only to watch the local industry move overseas, leaving them to sit and drink and worry about the world we’re passing down.

Balancing the heavy subject matter, Eubanks’ lyrics include plenty of humor, including the ironic “Everybody Loves You (When You’re Dead).”  A pleasant surprise is the track “Clockwork,” perhaps furthest from bluegrass and more likely to evoke a slow dance than a hoedown. Eubanks said if he had to attach a label to the song, he would probably call it pop. He said he wrote the song in his twenties but never found a home for it. 

Eubanks hand-picked a group of musicians to back him on the album, a stripped-down crew he says he liked and knew could play. Eubanks played all the bass on the album—half acoustic and half electric—along with guitar, drums, and percussion. Michael Prewitt provided mandolin and harmony to Eubanks’ lead vocals. Multi-instrumentalist Aaron Bibelhauser, who co-produced the album with Eubanks, provided a range of instruments as well and handled mixing and engineering. Jeff Guernsey played fiddle and electric guitar, and Scott T. Smith sang harmony on “Stop and Stare.”

For Eubanks, who has been writing songs since he was fifteen, this album was an opportunity to record a collection of songs that mean something to him personally—with the professional tools at his disposal. While with Special C, Eubanks co-wrote some of the songs the band recorded, but he was primarily considered an instrumentalist, so the project gave him the opportunity to select the songs that worked best for his purposes.

With the release of Rust Belt Town, Eubanks moves his bass to the forefront and pulls out all the stops to showcase his songwriting, picking, and vocals.