Tag: Song Premiere

LISTEN: Delta Spirit, “What Is There”

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Artist: Delta Spirit
Hometown: NYC, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Austin, Montreal
Song: “What Is There”
Album: What Is There
Release Date: September 11, 2020
Label: New West Records

In Their Words: “’What is There’ is an acrostic poem that I wrote for the guys in the band, with each verse directed at a specific person. I wrote the song in the winter of 2018 while living in Oslo. We had just decided to give the band another go and I was feeling sentimental about the journey we had been on since 2005. We were all just kids trying to break into this business. Each of us had been burned by the major label system with other projects. Starting Delta Spirit with my best friends, traveling the world, and playing music that meant the world to us was such an improbable miracle, but then it felt inevitable. There were moments when we lost our way as brothers and as creative collaborators, but since the break, we have found new and better ways to communicate. And that feeling of inevitability is back.” — Matthew Logan Vasquez, Delta Spirit

Photo credit: Alex Kweskin

LISTEN: Balsam Range, “Grit and Grace”

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Artist: Balsam Range
Hometown: Haywood County, North Carolina
Song: “Grit and Grace”
Release Date: September 4, 2020
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “’Grit and Grace’ is the kind of song that every single person who walks this earth can or will likely relate to at some point during their journey. But with determination, courage, faith, and finding the inner grit to overcome struggles, we live to tell another story. One that has a happy ending for us. My desire is that this song provides encouragement and strength to anyone who may be suffering. That they may find peace in knowing they are not alone.

“The inspiration for ‘Grit and Grace’ came from a man who served his country, walked the Bataan Death March, and was a prisoner of war for 3½ years, Walter Middleton. When my mom asked him how he got through it, his answer was simply, ‘I provided the grit and God provided the grace.’ He later in life wrote a book about his time spent as a prisoner of war and he signed the book to my mother with, ‘For folks like you I would gladly do it again.’ It is hard to comprehend the willingness to suffer that greatly for others but many before us have. Life is about learning, teaching, sharing, and helping those along our journey that are experiencing what we may have already experienced and by grace overcame.” — Buddy Melton, Balsam Range (vocalist and fiddler)

Photo credit: David Simchok

LISTEN: Great Peacock, “Heavy Load”

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Artist: Great Peacock
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Heavy Load”
Album: Forever Better Worse
Release Date: October 9, 2020
Label: Soundly Music

In Their Words: “I don’t totally know what this song means or is about. I just know that it makes me feel a lot of different emotions. We love so many things throughout the course of our life. Love is experienced and given and received in so many different ways for all manner of experiences, memories, places, things, and people. I think the real message of this song is that love isn’t always an easy thing, but you can’t give up on it. You have to give and receive it. I’m telling myself that in this song. I’m not singing to anyone else. I’m singing to me.” — Andrew Nelson, Great Peacock

Photo credit: Harrison Hudson

LISTEN: Hayes Carll, “Beaumont” (Acoustic)

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Artist: Hayes Carll
Hometown: Woodlands, Texas; currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Beaumont” (Acoustic)
Album: Alone Together Sessions
Release Date: September 4, 2020
Label: Dualtone

In Their Words: “I started out singing on the southeast coast of Texas. Beaumont was just an hour up the road from where I was living. I had a few gigs there. A few friends too. The town just kept finding its way into my work. Its physical proximity to Houston, combined with the cultural differences, made it an interesting origin point for the narrator in this song. He’s in the city but the perspective comes from a simpler place. I’m thinking about all the folks down there right now dealing with yet another hurricane.” — Hayes Carll

Photo credit: David McClister

LISTEN: John Fullbright, “Crossing Over”

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Artist: John Fullbright
Hometown: Born in Bearden, Oklahoma; lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Song: “Crossing Over” (written by Steve Ripley)
Album: Back to Paradise: A Tulsa Tribute to Okie Music
Release Date: August 28, 2020
Label: Horton Records

In Their Words: “I played various keyboards and acoustic guitar, percussion, and sang a bunch of stuff — I was all over the map on the record. I picked out ‘If the Shoe Fits’ by Leon Russell because I’m pretty sure that song was recorded at Paradise Studio and it’s about that place. I did an audible at the last minute and recorded a Hoyt Axton song called ‘Jealous Man.’ We wound up doing it in one take, which always feels nice. I thought the selection was great — we went from the obscure to stuff that everybody knows.

“I also recorded a song called ‘Crossing Over’ by Steve Ripley. Yeah, it’s my buddy, Steve. It’s literally a song about him going on to the next thing, and right after, he went on to the next thing. There was a tape glitch sound when we were recording it that was just subtle enough that everyone just turned and looked at each other. It was so subtle that it wouldn’t mess up everything else. It was just a little ‘Hey guys,’ ‘Hey kids.’ That was Steve.

“I’d heard about Leon’s Grand Lake Studio for a long time. It was a lot cooler and vibier than I had expected. I didn’t know that so many of the records that I really like were recorded there. So, walking around the place, and just kinda feeling it out, it was almost as good as being there back in the day. This is a snapshot in time of the Tulsa music scene that is very eclectic and very talented. And it’s a city that obviously doesn’t forget its roots, its past, and celebrates it and builds on it.” — John Fullbright

Photo credit: Phil Clarkin

WATCH: James Lee Baker, “100 Summers”

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Artist: James Lee Baker
Hometown: Amarillo, Texas. Currently living in Denver, Colorado.
Song: “100 Summers”
Album: 100 Summers
Release Date: September 4, 2020

In Their Words: “The last few years of my life I have been on a personal journey to discover my place in existence. In this infinitely expanding and massive, hostile universe, my perspective has changed from one of fear to one of acceptance. In all of the chaos surrounding us, we are capable through our own free will of creating our own paradise and sharing it with others. It is in this life that we should strive to find happiness, not defer such joy of existence until after our inevitable deaths.

“All the things I own are temporary — my house, the money in my bank account, my car, my guitars. All of it will cease to matter at some point and … was it ever mine to begin with anyways? I am just trading one thing for another in the end. All I really have right now is the present moment and in a flash that could be taken from me, so why should I spend that time daydreaming about being somewhere else or wanting something I don’t have?

“I could ask for so many things but I’ve been there and I know that I will not be fulfilled. ‘If I could have one wish, it would be to live a life full of meaning and wonder for 100 Summers.’ It would be a life spent investing into the most important thing in existence — being alive and enjoying the tender moments of it with those that I love.” — James Lee Baker

Photo credit: Delaney Gibson

LISTEN: Dianne Davidson, “Sounds of the City”

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Artist: Dianne Davidson
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Sounds Of The City”
Album: Perigon: Full Circle
Release Date: August 28, 2020
Label: Perigon Music

In Their Words: “I was 19 or 20. I was already being a bit beaten up by the business. I spent two weeks on the road with The Moody Blues as opening act while I was touring my third album, Mountain Mama. Sometimes on those quick one-nighter tours, you can lose your bearings and realize you don’t quite know where you are. I was in a high-rise hotel, down below was traffic and noise and people milling about. I felt like a lost soul and wrote the song to center myself again. As fate would have it, I never recorded it until now. I was fortunate enough to have it recorded by Tracy Nelson on her Homemade Songs album in 1978. I was so grateful for her version of it. I knew I needed to do it on this record. It just belonged. The feeling just poured out and I was blessed with the beauty of my friends who played and sang on it. The B3 player, Austin Wireman, wasn’t even born when I wrote it. Full Circle.” — Dianne Davidson

Photo provided by the artist.

LISTEN: The Sea The Sea, “Rainstorm”

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Artist: The Sea The Sea (Mira & Chuck e. Costa)
Hometown: Troy, New York
Song: “Rainstorm”
Album: Stumbling Home
Release Date: August 28, 2020
Label: AntiFragile Music

In Their Words: “There is a love story in this song — about trying to find your person in the world, yourself in the world, your way in the world. The first time Chuck and I sang together, a storm rolled in. And it’s taken me awhile to find how to write about it in a way that felt right, but there’s something about how it physically feels before a storm that feels akin to some deep level of knowing — something is about to happen, or it’s already happening. This song is also about what it feels like to turn away from or be lost in that instinct, and then find your way back to it again. Chuck and I lost touch for a few years after we met; I wasn’t playing music almost at all during that time. So this is also a love song to the thousands of times we have to lose our way sometimes to find our way back.” — Mira, The Sea The Sea

Photo credit: Kiki Vassilakis

LISTEN: Decoration Day, “Harry Goes to War”

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Artist: Decoration Day
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
Song: “Harry Goes to War”
Album: Makeshift Future
Release Date: September 18, 2020

In Their Words: “A few months before he died, my grandpa sent me a typewritten letter in the mail with the title ‘Anti-Dementia Memoir #4.’ Every one of the grandkids had gotten one — it was just his charming way of preserving his memories and keeping his mind sharp until the end. The letter recounts his times as a soldier in the Canadian Army during World War II. There is quite a range in the two short pages; he writes about a joyous weekend playing hooky from the army camp, and also about the weight of being forced to burn the instruments of prisoners of war, who would later go on to open their own businesses in Canada. The story flowed in such a natural, folk-like way that I knew it had to be adapted into a song. When I hear it back now, it doesn’t feel like anything I’ve written, but instead like a piece of family lore that’s always existed.” — Justin Orok, Decoration Day

Photo credit: Brianna Roye

LISTEN: The Texicana Mamas, “Lo Siento Mi Vida”

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Artist: The Texicana Mamas (Tish Hinojosa, Stephanie Urbina Jones, and Patricia Vonne)
Hometown: San Antonio, Texas
Song: “Lo Siento Mi Vida”
Album: The Texicana Mamas
Release Date: August 21, 2020
Label: The Texicana Mamas

In Their Words: “I was hooked on Linda Ronstadt’s music from the first time I heard ‘Different Drum’ in 1967 when I was 12 years old. When I heard her sing ‘Lo Siento Mi Vida’ for the first time in 1976; as a fledgling folk singer myself at that time, I grew a whole new admiration for her artistry as a writer, as a sister, as a Latina. This poignant, tender song sung in Spanish captured the perfect essence of the romanticism of the beautiful Spanish language and sentiment. I am so pleased that our group, The Texicana Mamas, had the opportunity to pay tribute to Linda though recording her song.” — Tish Hinojosa, The Texicana Mamas

Photo credit: Emma Trejo