LOCASH Put Their Own Names on the New Album: 'Chris & Preston' Out October 23

LOCASH built the brand. Now they're signing the record with their own names. The platinum-selling duo — singer-songwriters Preston Brust and Chris Lucas — announced this week that their new album Chris & Preston will arrive October 23 via Galaxy Label Group, their own independent label, putting the friendship behind one of modern country's most enduring partnerships front and center on the cover.

"LOCASH is what we built together, but Chris & Preston is who we are," Brust said in the announcement. It's a meaningful distinction at this point in their career. For years the LOCASH name has been the vehicle — the radio hits, the touring brand, the neon sign. The new title strips it back to two brothers, two friends, two voices, and the shared history that made the music in the first place. When artists with this many years together decide to get personal on the cover, it's usually because the record inside is personal, too.

And the track list suggests exactly that. The 12-song album leads with the pair's new song Where My Stars Line Up, released in late September as the first look at this chapter — a sweeping, cosmic-tinged love song written by Brust and Lucas with Taylor Phillips and Jeffery East and produced by Jacob Rice. It sits alongside Talkin Bout, the duo's current chart-climbing country radio single, and a set of love songs that lean into the touchstones they keep coming back to: family, hometown roots, and country music itself. The title track of their summer EP, Let The Country Music Play, appears here as a full-blown collaboration with Parmalee — a feel-good summit between two acts who've been holding down the party side of country radio for years.

What's striking about the credits is how much of Nashville's A-list the duo pulled into the room. Production comes from Jacob Rice (Conner Smith, Jon Langston), Ben Johnson (Jelly Roll, HARDY), and Blake Bollinger (Rodney Atkins, Brett Eldredge). The co-writer list reads like a songwriters' hall of fame ballot: Thomas Rhett and Cole Swindell, chart-dominating hitmaker Ashley Gorley — the man behind smashes for Morgan Wallen and Chris Stapleton — and four-time Grammy winner Josh Kear, whose pen has powered hits for Carrie Underwood and Luke Bryan. Track seven, YES, puts nearly all of them in one room at once: Johnson, Gorley, Swindell, Rhett, John Byron, and the duo themselves. That's not a writing session; that's a summit.

The album is also the next big milestone for Galaxy Label Group, the independent label Brust and Lucas launched in 2024 to take creative control of their music while mentoring the next generation of artists. That bet paid off fast: 2025's Bet The Farm, the label's inaugural LP release, delivered the duo's multi-week No. 1 smash Hometown Home — proof that the independent route could produce the biggest hits of their career. Chris & Preston doubles down on that independence. In an era when even established acts are re-examining what a label deal is for, LOCASH simply built their own table.

They're not exactly waiting around for release week, either. The duo's Let the Country Music Play Tour — the North American headline run launched this summer — is rolling straight through the album drop and on to December 12 in Hollywood, Florida. They took the stage at the Tulsa State Fair this week, and they're set to headline The Shed Smokehouse & Juke Joint in Maryville, Tennessee, on October 9. The schedule reads like a band that has no intention of letting an album release slow the machine down: new record in October, stages booked into December, and then — because apparently one album cycle wasn't enough — a six-song Christmas project on the way for the holidays, with last year's Snow Angel getting a second shot alongside originals and traditionals like O Holy Night, expected in late October or early November.

That Christmas news, which the duo shared on Backstage Country with John Shomby, tells you everything about where LOCASH are in 2026: prolific, independent, and having the time of their lives. A duo that once fought for every inch of country radio is now releasing albums, EPs, and holiday projects on its own imprint, touring nine months a year, and putting its first names on the cover like it was the plan all along. October 23 can't come fast enough.

Mark the date: Chris & Preston lands October 23 on Galaxy Label Group, with Where My Stars Line Up and Talkin Bout already out in the world and a Parmalee collaboration waiting in the wings. For more of this week's country news — including a chart record that just won't quit — keep it locked on the Previously music desk.