[Cover photo credit to Sam Huggin]

Richmond, Virginia-based artists Stephen McCarthy (The Long Ryders, The Jayhawks) and Kevin Pittman (The Dads) have joined forces as The Sky Chiefs, announcing their forthcoming self-titled LP, due out February 13th, 2026. The duo have released the album’s first single and its accompanying video, “House Full Of Company.”

In the early 1990s, the pair holed up in a 100-year-old bungalow that doubled as a recording studio, songwriting lab, late-night speakeasy, and more. Over the course of a year, they recorded two dozen songs.

Then, life happened and the record got shelved, the tapes vanished, and decades passed. The album was lost until this year, when the original recordings resurfaced in a friend’s attic. 

“House Full Of Company” was the first song they wrote and recorded in the bungalow, which was the former home of a World War I pilot. The band says it “reflects the spirits, past and present, that inhabited it.”

After recording together in the 90s, the duo grew apart, but many years later, returning to the East Coast, Pittman built his own studio and reconnected with longtime friends like McCarthy and Bryan Harvey of House of Freaks. In recent years, he’s released two solo albums, Victrola Mouth (2021) and Sundog (2023).

Now, with their long-lost debut restored, remixed by Pittman, and ready for the world to hear, The Sky Chiefs are once again blending McCarthy’s guitar-driven Americana roots with Pittman’s melodic Rock.