Dean III and the Wagers’ new album Dirty Souls is a comeback album. Or it's a debut album from a brand-new artist. Or both.

More than ten years ago his story was that of a young pop singer-songwriter with a debut disc and enthusiastic band ultimately attracting serious major label development and everything going great until… well, things at higher levels change and the group was a complete corporate casualty.

Music is put aside. Dean Goldstein builds a log cabin home in rural Sandwich, Illinois for his family, which now includes triplets. He becomes an expert cabinet and furniture maker while just recently overcoming drug and alcohol addictions. That sobriety invigorates and informs the new album helmed by veteran producer Sean O’Keefe (Plain White T's, Fall Out Boy, Hawthorne Heights).

To reflect his new beginning he's now going by the name of Dean III (pronounced Dean 3). He's attracted a great experienced rhythm section for his live rockin' Americana and dubbed them The Wagers. Versatile drummer Scott Gillis has played professionally with prog, jazz, even Indian ensembles, toured internationally and played Lollapalooza with Suzy Brack & New Jack Lords, and hit the skins for rockers Slink Moss, Kat Parsons, Jet Driver and Patrick Capone. Bassist Kirk Bec has been a rhythm partner with Gillis in several bands but can count stints with Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and Mary Chapin Carpenter on his resume.

The music that Dean created for Dirty Souls, which has been described as original rockin’ Americana that owes a nod and a wink to the Faces and The Stones, comes from this place of renewal and sobriety. “A lot of the record has to do with me getting clean and sober. I finally decided that I have been padlocked to swimming against the current upriver my whole life, and my arms are tired! I was tired of always forcing things to try to go the way I thought they should. I decided to completely let go, and to trust that it would work out, whatever it was. There began my attempt to do it the right way this time, as a clean and sober thinking individual.”

Dirty Souls takes its rock and fuses it with crackling energy, a touch of twang, and the modern-retro sensibility of the Black Keys. The album was recorded and mixed in ten days. “Everything was recorded initially live with me on guitar and Sean on drums. I overdubbed bass and extra guitars afterwards. None of the music was recorded with more than three takes. I still felt raw from being torn apart, and I wanted the music to reflect that.”

The Wagers were formed after the album was completed. Scott Gillis has played with Dean’s old band, Coin, and they hadn’t spoken for a decade but a copy reached him. “I got this call from Scott saying ‘Oh my God… YES! I want to be a part of this.’ Scott, unbeknownst to Dean, then sent the record to Kirk Bec eliciting a similar reaction. A new rock’n’roll trio is here.

So it’s a long, long way from Dean Goldstein & Coin’s Ralph Covert-produced Liberty on Waterdog Records back in 1996 to Dirty Souls on Spacewank in 2013 but well, things (and people) change.

“Dirty Souls” is produced by Dean with help from Sean O'Keefe (Fall Out Boy, Plain White T’s, and Gold Motel), who also mixed the record and played the drums on it. It was mastered by Brian Lucey at Magic Garden Mastering (The Black Keys, The Shins and Eric Clapton).