July 17, 2005 at the Burgerhaus, Heilbronn-Bockingen, Germany with the band's current roster. It was released in Europe on CD and vinyl by Blue Rose Records. Bloodshot Records released the band's next album, Zoysia, recorded in Ardent Studios in Memphis with producer Jeff Powell, in June 2006. Zoysia (zoy-zhuh), a metaphor for tolerance and centered values and common ground, is a hardy grass, plentiful in Festus/Crystal City and Saint Louis, Missouri, where these hardworking musicians grew up. After years of misleading portrayals of the band's music as "hillbilly", the band's catalog proves otherwise with themes of maturity, generosity of spirit, neighborliness, insightful self-reflection, personal roots and modern society, individualism, pride of place, slow-mending hearts, and post-9/11 reality through the filter of a couple's romance. The Bottle Rockets continued with Zoysia: It would be a mistake to claim that Missouri's answer to Neil Young's Crazy Horse has gone soft but their first release in more than three years shows greater range and reflection than is typical for the rock-solid quartet. The opening "Better Than Broken", the brooding "Happy Anniversary", and the acoustic wistful "Where I Come From" all evoke the aftermath of romantic upheaval.... "Middle Man" could be the band's signature tune defining a sensibility that is Middle American in more than geography. The sage wisdom of frontman Brian Henneman's "Blind" and the twang of "Feeling Down" show the band's countrier side while "I Quit" has the groove of retro soul. Yet the guitar finale of the seven-minute album-closing title song ["Zoysia"] finds the Bottle Rockets as explosive as ever. —Don McLeese Zoysia received positive reviews, including a spot on novelist/audiophile Stephen King's Best Records of 2006 list in Entertainment Weekly magazine. 2008: 15th anniversary year The band celebrated its 15th anniversary throughout 2008. Instead of extensive touring like in previous years, the band played only 15 shows in select cities during the entire year. The Bottle Rockets' reputation as the underdog spokesmen translated into a collaboration with fans in 2008. Fans of the Bottle Rockets had a voice in the band's 15th Anniversary Tour, having been invited to design set lists for the 2008 tour from the Bottle Rockets’ catalog plus one cover song suggestion. The band hand-picked a fan's set list for each of the special anniversary shows and entered the set list winners in a year-long contest to win one of 2 grand prizes, a $1500.00 custom Golden