Brandon Flowers Debuts “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” in Bristol, a Song From His Second Nashville Album

Brandon Flowers gave “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” its live debut at Bristol Beacon on Saturday, October 17, 2026, reportedly from the still-untitled follow-up to his August solo album Thrasher. In the encore he covered The Coral’s 2002 single “Dreaming Of You.” He told the room the second record will come out sometime in 2027, Stereogum reported.

The new song takes its title from Flannery O’Connor’s 1953 short story, Stereogum noted. NME described a slow, harmonica-led ballad under a plain green light that lifts at the chorus: “She can change her number, she can change her mind / But a good man is hard to find.” The Coral cover, which NME said had not appeared at earlier shows, gave the band’s indie standard a country tinge, sung with his solo band and two backing singers.

What is the second album?

Nothing official yet: no title, no release date. What exists is Flowers’ own word. Before playing the song in Bristol he called the Nashville sessions a “real fruitful time” and said he wrote and recorded two records, according to Stereogum. He told Pollstar the same thing in its October 13 cover story: “There’s a follow-up record. We made two records in Nashville.”

In August he told NME the sister album is more “romantic” and “maybe not as country but maybe country-leaning; in the same way that Tom Petty is country adjacent, or The Travelling Wilburys.”

I see it as an answer to the loneliness epidemic. It is a problem that I’m seeing where we’re separating ourselves.Brandon Flowers, to NME

Why is a stadium frontman playing theatres?

Because the songs need talking around, he says. “One of my favorite aspects of country’s tradition is the storytelling, not just in the songs but around the songs,” Flowers told Pollstar. “I don’t have a lot of opportunity to do that in a stadium or in an arena. It just doesn’t lend itself to story time very well.” He named Bruce Springsteen and old John Prine footage as the models.

The solo run also solves a supply problem. “For a band, they’re not so thrilled if I come to the table with 30 songs,” he told Pollstar, calling solo work “a great outlet that I’ve been able to carve out along the way.” The rooms are small by his standards, and the one show Pollstar Boxoffice has reported, at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., sold out.

He is not testing whether a solo career works. He is road-testing album two while album one is still on sale.

What does the Bristol setlist say about the plan?

Read the 21 songs on setlist.fm and the balance is plain. Eight Thrasher songs made the night, against four Killers songs, and seven more came from his earlier solo records, starting with the 2010 track “Crossfire.” The Killers material is there to reward the crowd, not to carry it.

The same night, Bob Dylan was slipping live debuts into his Oslo opener, and Harry Styles premiered an unreleased song at Madison Square Garden the night before. A new song in the middle of the set is how a catalog artist keeps the show from being a museum. For Flowers it is also a way to see which new songs land with a crowd, months before release.

Where does the Thrasher tour go next?

Thrasher came out August 21 on Island Records. The tour opened in Phoenix on September 1, ran through two nights at the Encore Theater in Las Vegas on October 5 and 6, then crossed to Bournemouth, London’s Royal Albert Hall, Bristol and Nottingham. Five dates remain on the announced UK and Ireland run:

Flowers already owns the stadium. What he is building in theatres is a second audience that follows the songwriter. “We’re putting the feelers out there and doing these shows and seeing how they go,” he told Pollstar. “It’s just taking it one day at a time.” Bristol suggests the next record is already part of the show.