It marks their first new music in 9 months, when the insistent garage-rock smarts of previous single “Be My Friend” landed it on the BBC6 music playlist. “Second Time” was premiered by Steve Lamacq on BBC6 Music, who said “it sounds so unhurried and just has a lovely jangle to it.” Teenagehood, brotherhood and a love for alternative music have united The Goa Express from the off. Hailing from the northern industrial towns of Todmorden and Burnley before being adopted more recently by the Manchester culture carriers, their teenage years can be viewed as something of a hedonistic pilgrimage into the underbelly of suburban rock and roll- their first gig having been 3 songs blasted out their mates garage, the next on top of a local vintage shop where the floor nearly caved in:
But in an age where artists and bands are often exist as heavily constructed, pretentious facsimiles, it certainly feels new. The intensity of this friendship has resulted in the occasional bust up along the way, yet it only adds to the burning chemistry that the band offer on record and on stage. together, brothers James Douglas Clarke (guitar + vocals) and Joe Clarke (keys), along with Joey Stein (lead guitar), Naham Muzaffar (bass) and Sam Launder (drums) all contribute to a fuzzy wall of diverse sound, becoming harder to pin down with their constantly evolving, psych-umbrella’d, rock and roll. what sets The Goa Express apart from other musicians who sit comfortably within scenes is that their identity as a band has been growing organically long before the 5 of them decided to pick up instruments and teach themselves art of killing time.
“Second Time” – mixed by Ride’s Mark Gardener – unpicks the imperfections of youth, not dwelling on mistakes, letting them run their course. no matter how foolish the deed, with allies by your side, all is well. the band comments: “Second Time is a song about young people making the same mistakes over and over and over again; a warming ballad which breaks aside from our live performances, foolishly thinking, that it’s able to mend itself.”
A song about young people that was recorded down at Abbey Road and brought to life by Mark Gardener. The video captures our journey from our roots in Burnley and Todmorden to Manchester. Directed by Mairead O’Connor and shot by Andy Little.
Released April 20, 2021
Written by James Douglas Clarke, Joe Clarke, Joey Stein, Naham Muzaffar and Sam Launder (aka THE GOA EXPRESS)
Recorded at Abbey Road for BBC Introducing
The single ‘Second Time’ out 18th June on Ra-Ra Rok
“For our Levitation Session we recorded on reel-to-reel 1/2 inch tape in the middle of the Mojave Desert in Antelope Valley. Due to my natural tendencies to explore the layers of my ancestry and being forever inspired by the beautiful sounds coming out of the Saharan desert, I wanted to challenge myself to produce a recording that doesn’t filter but fully embraces a similar environment. A search for symbiosis between the music and the ground it’s made on. Thanks to a place I love and respect, a welcomed challenge, and some of my closest friends, what you are hearing is Night Beats in one of its truest and rarest forms.
Night Beats ventured out into the Mojave Desert and recorded a discography spanning 13 track set on reel-to-reel tape, featuring classic Night Beats tracks and our first chance to hear some jams from the new Outlaw R&B LP in a live setting. Thank you for listening and thank you to those who lived on and cherished this land before us.” DLB
Thank you for listening and thank you to those who lived on and cherished this land before us” – Night Beats
Indie-rock group Penelope Isles have been pretty quiet since the release of their lush and electric debut album Until The Tide Creeps In in 2019, but on new single “Sailing Still,” they prove that time has been spent maturing and evolving as songwriters. Complex string arrangements and heavy guitars drop like an anvil, feeling like a noise-pop avalanche has made contact. It’s hard to successfully pull off a song that makes such dynamic use of space—especially within the format Penelope Isles is used to—but they pull it off with the effortless brilliance of bands like Grizzly Bear or Beach House.
Almost all records are a snapshot, a musical ribbon bow that documents a very specific moment in time or simply ties-off everything up to that point. Indigo De Souza’s “I Love My Mom”, her debut LP initially released in 2018, was the latter; a collection of the best songs she’d written in the few years that preceded it, recorded quickly and breathlessly and thrown out into the world.
Consisting of ten songs, “I Love My Mom” feels both raw and unabashed. Indigo pulled a band together for the first time, and was quickly encouraged to commit her songs to tape. Recorded at her friend’s house, they played almost everything live in just a few days, and released the record naturally, with little fanfare. That the record quickly took on a life of its own, deeply resonating with those who heard it, is a testament to Indigo’s song writing which took inspiration from the unique worlds created by Arthur Russel, Sparklehorse, The Microphones, as well as contemporaries such as LVL UP and Happyness.
Two of the songs have racked up more than a million streams each on Spotify: “Take O Ur Pants” and “How I Get Myself Killed.” The former balances an often breezy lead vocal with gnarly undercurrents of guitar before the whole thing lets rip in its punchy chorus, while the latter, the album’s opening track, finds a different mood entirely, a slacker rock gem that repeats its chorus as a chest-beating mantra.
Elsewhere, “Good Heart” furthers the dichotomy which sits at the record’s core, each moment of quiet introspection soon met by a cacophonous burst of energy.
Indigo De Souza under exclusive license to Saddle CreekRecords
Alexa Rose was born in the Alleghany Highlands of western Virginia, raised in the tiny railroad town of Clifton Forge. Though no one in her immediate family played or sang, she inherited a deep musical legacy.
“Growing up I would hear stories of my great-grandfather Alvie who, for a time, lived and played with [bluegrass great] Lester Flatt when they were both young men,” says Rose. “Apparently, Lester tried to get him to move to Nashville and pursue a career. But my great-grandfather decided to stay in the mountains with his wife on their farm.”
“There are so many musicians where I’m from, people who just play on their porch or in some local bar — and they’re amazing. They don’t do it commercially, that’s not the essence of what they do. There’s a deep connection between their sense of place and the music they make. That’s what really inspires me about the musical culture in the South and the mountains, especially.”
That visceral connection is at the core of Rose’s debut album, Medicine for Living (Big Legal Mess,). A stunning ten-track effort, it finds the 25-year-old singer-songwriter bringing a wellspring of tradition to bear on an enlivening collection of contemporary roots songs.
A mostly self-taught musician, Rose picked up the guitar as a teen. “I always grew up with traditional mountain music in my ear and in my community, but I don’t think I actualized its influenced on me until I moved to North Carolina in 2013.” It was there, as a music major at Appalachian State University, that Rose was fully exposed to a wealth of old time music, regional stylists like Doc Watson, and most crucially, the ancient folk ballads carried over from the British Isles.
“Those traditional songs are presented in a stark way that preserves the stories. It’s all about the storytelling,” she says. “That really affected the way I started crafted my own songs and how I sang.”
Despite her studies, playing music was never a bloodless academic pursuit for Rose but rather a deeply intimate act. “I was a bedroom singer and songwriter. I didn’t perform out very much. Music was a very personal practice. I used it as something to come home to at the end of the day, and it always made me feel better. I don’t think I ever really considered it as a ‘career’ or had ambitions of performing – I was maybe like my great-grandfather in that way.”
But after graduating in 2016, Rose decided to take a leap, throwing herself into touring, playing as she explored the highways and byways of America. “I quit my job and started traveling and playing shows anywhere I could. That’s what I’ve done that the last three years. Going around that way – driving around in a beat-up van, earning very little money – you find yourself staying in truck stops, sleeping on people’s floors. You meet a lot of interesting folks that way. That experience informed the songs I’ve written.”
“In a way Medicine for Living is about all the lessons I’ve learned, of people and places that have shaped my worldview and my definitions of love and commitment. There’s a lot of tension between wanting to leave your home and go out into the world, and the roots that pull you back.”
Through her association with Tim Duffy – head of the non-profit Southern music preservation organization, Music Maker Relief Foundation — Rose was brought to the attention of Big Legal Mess label head Bruce Watson. He signed Rose and brought her to his Memphis home base to cut her full-length debut. “This album is Appalachia-meets-Memphis,” says Rose. “The stories and inspiration emanate from the mountains, but the tracks have all these different musical elements coming in.”
Recorded at Watson’s Delta-Sonic Studio, Rose is backed by a crew of Bluff City all-stars including a core band led by legendary guitarist Will Sexton, drummer George Sluppick and bassist Mark Edgar Stuart, with guests including organists Rick Steff (Lucero) and Al Gamble (St. Paul & The Broken Bones), among others.
“The funny thing was I hadn’t met any of them at all before we started recording,” says Rose. “You know, playing your songs for someone in a studio is like getting naked in front of them; it’s a very personal thing to do. But when you play music together, you skip all the normal steps of a relationship immediately go to this really close place with people.”
Album co-producers Watson and Clay Jones (Modest Mouse, Buddy Guy) decided to keep the sessions feeling as fresh and immediate as possible. “None of the musicians had heard any of the songs or even heard me before we started. Bruce really wanted to capture their gut response to the music,” says Rose. “What came out of that was really cool – the songs moved and took shape in totally new and different ways. We sorta let the songs be like taffy – we let them get stretched and pulled however they want to get shaped.”
In an era where the term Americana has lost much of its meaning Medicine for Living is just that: a fully realized, multi-layered merger of old country music, traditional folk songs, coloured by rock and roll and mountain soul. “There’s a lot of people I’m influenced by that show up in the songs in different ways,” says Rose. “Whether it’s Gillian Welch or John Prine or Townes Van Zandt or Alynda Segarra from Hurray for the Riff Raff.”
Although the material spans a five-year period of Rose’s writing, Medicine for Living ultimately works as a unified song cycle. “The theme of the album is the commonality of sorrow in the human experience,” she says. “I find a lot of beauty in everyday life. How we look upon the small things, and how we handle those larger obstacles that stand in our way.”
“Some of the songs are about being in a dark hole that life puts you in, and some of them are about pulling yourself out of that rut. It’s about that journey and how we nurse ourselves through it. And how love, ultimately, is the best medicine.”
I started Clearwater with a simple monotonous guitar riff. I wanted it to feel like an alarm, almost under your skin in the background. It was too stark until Al Gamble laid down some synth magic and gave the song the underwater, dreamy feel I was hoping for. Al is a legend. He has a way of making a song shine in its rawest, gentlest form. So we let it be what it was with just the three of us: myself, Al, and my dear friend Ashley Wright who sang harmony.
Alexa Rose – “Clearwater Park” Out now on Big Legal Mess
41 years after its inception, 4AD Records continues to look forward. But a record label’s catalogue of releases is essentially timeless. So, the idea grew to ask current artists to cover a song of their choosing from 4AD past: a creative experiment rooted in the spirit of collaboration and a snapshot of 4AD today.
“Bills & Aches & Blues” will be released on 2nd April digitally, with standard vinyl and CD editions following on 23rd July and a deluxe vinyl boxset later this year. The first 12 months’ profits from Bills & Aches & Blues will be donated to The Harmony Project, a Los Angeles-based after-school programme for children from communities and schools that lack equitable access to studying the arts or music.
Bills & Aches & Blues’ 18 recordings contain fascinating connections between artist and track. The earliest song chosen (by U.S. Girls) is The Birthday Party’s ‘Junkyard’, from 1981; the most recent are the two Grimes covers (‘Genesis’ and ‘Oblivion’, respectively by Spencer. and Dry Cleaning) from 2012. Suitably, for the one band that bridges 4AD past and present, The Breeders are all over Bills & Aches & Blues. They’re covered three times – ‘Cannonball’ by Tune-Yards, ‘Mountain Battles’ by Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and ‘Off You’ by Big Thief, whilst The Breeders cover ‘The Dirt Eaters’ by their ‘90s contemporaries His Name Is Alive.
Landmark songs such as ‘Cannonball’, ‘Song To The Siren’ and Pixies’ ‘Where is My Mind?’, will feel comfortable to casual fans, however by contrast, much joy can be found in the album’s surprise choices, such as Air Miami’s ‘Seabird’ and the Lush B-side ‘Sunbathing’, covered respectively by new signings Maria Somerville and Jenny Hval.
Bills & Aches & Blues is named, arguably (as Elizabeth Fraser never published the lyrics) after the opening line of Cocteau Twins ‘Cherry-Coloured Funk’. Perhaps too unique and uncoverable in their own right, their legendary take on Tim Buckley’s ‘Song To The Siren’, under the name This Mortal Coil (along with Buckley’s pre-Starsailor acoustic version) informs SOHN’s cover.
Some tracks unearth hitherto hidden shared DNA, such as Future Islands’ and Colourbox’s ‘The Moon Is Blue’; other tracks are more akin to reinvention. Aldous Harding distils the melodic essence of Deerhunter’s ‘Revival’ and recasts it in her own uncanny image. U.S. Girls’ future-disco ‘Junkyard’ and Bing & Ruth’s neo-classical instrumental ‘Gigantic’ are even more radical interpretations. Leading off the album, Tkay Maidza brings both her Art Rap and R&B game, but also an unexpected ‘80s synth pop template, to Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind?’, a perfect title for these chaotic times.
The compilation is released digitally on 2nd April. Vinyl and CD editions to be released 23rd July. Deluxe vinyl boxset will be released later in 2021.
Rock was changing fast in 1968. The concept album was in the air, a development encouraged by The Beatles Sgt Pepper’s the previous year (though nobody seemed certain what its concept was, or even if it had one). Groups as diverse as The Hollies, The Moody Blues, and The Temptations were casting off jolly ditties, confronting issues and “going heavy.” It was get hip or be buried for many bands, and even as rootsy a figure as Blues man John Mayall was not immune to this shift, as “Bare Wires“, which was released on July 21st, 1968, and opens with a 22-minute suite, makes clear.
However, before you regard the bluesman’s break in the road as a fashionable aberration, bear in mind that Mayall had doubtless heard concept albums before rock thought of them; Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads (1940) had probably crossed his path; likewise Max Roach’s We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (1960), perhaps even Clyde McPhatter’s Songs Of The Big City (1964). Mayall was in good company, and if his audience would have been baffled by “Bare Wires Suite” a year earlier, tastes had changed and Mayall was now in a position to broaden his horizons. Mixing blues, folk, jazz, R&B, the nascent progressive rock, and even a touch of psychedelia, the seven songs that make up the “Suite” work well.
Mayall’s voice sounds perfectly at home throughout, he gets the opportunity to bring out all his “har” instruments, harmonium, harmonica, and harpsichord, without harming anyone, and the atmosphere is calm throughout the record, curious considering the ambitious music contained herein. Just play the opening tracks of what was Side Two on the original vinyl: “I’m A Stranger” is straight from the Bobby Bland book of elegant blues, while, by contrast, “No Reply” is a funky bongo workout that sounds like the result of a stoned afternoon.
There’s the expected driving blues guitar workout in “Hartley Quits,” (literally) a record of the moment drummer KeefHartley left the band, which finds Mick Taylor in skin-peeling form. And “Sandy” is an evocative acoustic slide song, closing the original LP in fine style. Mayall is strong vocally, and The Bluesbreakers, augmented with two saxes and Henry Lowther on cornet and violin, and now driven by the tempestuous Jon Hiseman on drums and Tony Reeves’ bass, are more flexible than ever.
What did Mayall’s following of hardcore blues aficionados make of his fresh approach? They made it his highest-charting album in the UK (No.3), and it represented his US breakthrough with a Top 60 placing on Billboard on September 22nd, 1968. Those fans were right: Bare Wires is one of the most satisfying albums in Mayall’s catalogue; “Suite” inspiration indeed.
15 years after our debut record and some 22 years since we first met and started playing as The Budos Band, here we are with Budos VI, Long in the Tooth. The Budos has a certain reputation that precedes us, but truth be told, beneath the infamous mayhem lies a true family with all the ups and downs, highs and lows and emotional benders that go along with it. We’ve been here for each other at our brightest and darkest times, shared many successes and shared great losses. We are at a point in our lives that anytime we can be in the same room playing music together its a celebration of life. The songs on this album capture that spontaneous energy, and it’s The Budos at its finest. Always about the collective, never the individual.
The idea of “evil funk” may raise some eyebrows among rock fans, but one listen to The Budos Band and even hardened metal purists will be boogeying with the best of them. The Staten Island, New York, nine-piece band play a dramatic brand of instrumental Afro-soul whose looming horns, steely guitars, and carnival keyboard accents are more reminiscent of ‘70s Dracula movies than they are platform heels. The band seems deeply in tune with this vibe, adorning their album covers with heavy imagery like volcanoes and venomous animals.
“We needed to stake out new territory on Burnt Offering,” says baritone sax player Jared Tankel. “We see the first three albums as a trilogy and Burnt Offering was something new. We wrote differently, recorded differently, it was all something new for us. So we needed to break the sequence. Now that we have done that, it’s time to return with V. We feel that we have taken the best parts of Burnt Offering and integrated it back into what grounded us in I, II and III.”
The band’s fifth release, V,, continues the Budos artistic tradition with a jet black featuring gothic fonts and a craggy mountain rising in the distance. Sonically, the album trades the lusher sound of “Burnt Offering” for trippier, more acidic tones that rely on straight-up proto-metal guitars and bass overlaid by sharp shocks of brass and hippie love cult organ, all set to a rambling mix of traditional drum and conga. The resulting music is cinematic yet menacing, the soundtrack to a bad drug trip in the desert in a blaxploitation flick.
Celebrating 15 years from the release of their debut album, Daptone’s Royal Court from Staten Island delivers a truly epic collection of new material that finds the group further bridging the gap between the farfisa-fueled Ethio-Funk stylings of their early recordings, with the psychedelic, Sabbath-inspired hellfire of late.
“In some ways, it’s reminiscent of our first two albums The Budos Band and Budos II,” says Tom Brenneck. “We branched off on Burnt Offering and V. Now, we’re still moving forward. You can play these songs on the dance-floor. We knew the horns had to stand out too. Thinking about hip-hop allowed us to put the bounce back into The Budos.” This is evident from needle drop to final rotation. Heavy drum breaks, reminiscent of the B-Boy approved grooves of their early output reign supreme, setting the stage for the pulsating, hallucinatory wall of organ, menacing horns, and rugged guitar riffs to permeate your soul – leaving the listener in a rhythmic wash of Budonian rapture.
“Long in the Tooth” represents the culmination of a 15-year journey by a band that has consistently carved its own distinct path through the grooves of history.
Liverpool quartet The Mysterines are back with a rocking swagger that shows a real sense of confidence in their step, so much so that they don’t even need to look where they’re going – each foot forward is going in exactly the right place, no doubt.
Following their thrilling return last week with their colossal new single ‘In My Head’, The Mysterines have shared a mysterious, film noir inspired new music video for the track.
Gritty and suspenseful, ‘In My Head’ continues in triumphant stride for the Liverpool four piece and marks a thrilling new chapter for the band. A burgeoning tour de force, The Mysterines have been making serious waves in their short career. Barely out of their teens, they sold out their first ever UK headline tour in February 2020, have supported Royal Blood, The Amazons and Sea Girls on tour, as well as headlined the BBC Introducing Stage at Reading and Leeds. Their fans include Steve Lamacq, Jack Saunders, Dan P Carter and Huw Stephens, alongside tastemakers NME, Independent, Metro, MOJO, DIY, Dork, Upset, CLASH and Gigwise.
About their new single, frontwoman Lia Metcalfe says “‘In My Head’ appears to be a love song, but that was not the original intention. I did want it to superficially be seen as that, but in reality it’s a song about people who struggle with their mental health. Partly autobiographical, it’s about how sometimes life can feel like you’re being haunted by something out of your control.”
As the entire world spiralled into nearly complete and utter destruction for the past year, The Mysterines took this time to work on their highly anticipated debut album, in arms with esteemed producer Catherine Marks (Wolf Alice, The Big Moon, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, Foals, The Killers, Alanis Morisette) at Assault and Battery in London.
“Anyone who has ever been granted the opportunity to record a debut album understands that this situation could be deemed as ‘bad timing’. Instead, I like to refer to it as ‘almost perfect timing’. Nothing seemed more fitting than to record an album about self destruction whilst the world itself entered into what seemed like a brief apocalypse.” says Lia.
She continues “As a band, we were really grateful to still be able to create during such bleak times. Our wonderful producer Catherine Marks, who put everything she had into the record, turned my songs into perfect pictures of themselves, with both the most frightening and beautiful reflections.”
With this latest banger they’re appealing to your darker side, with utterly filthy guitars on hand to rock your head into next week while Lia Metcalfe’s voice belts her questions at you as if you’ve done someone seriously wrong and are in denial. Metcalfe’s voice is straight out of a classic rock album, dripping with a passion and intensity that makes every word hit that bit harder. When the band really let loose, you’ll do well to keep your head on your shoulders as it’ll be wanting to break loose.
Nail down the furniture and scoot the elderly neighbours out for the afternoon, things are about to get very loud in all the right ways.
The Mysterines are: Lia Metcalfe (vocals/guitar) George Favager (bass) Callum Thompson (guitar) Paul Crilly (drums)
The Mysterines Tour Dates
13th October The Trades Club, Hebden Bridge (SOLD OUT) 14th October The Garage, London 20th October O2 Academy, Leicester 21st October The Crescent, York (SOLD OUT) 22nd October The Key Club, Leeds 23rd October Club Academy, Manchester 28th October The Mash House, Edinburgh 29th October St Doms, Newcastle 30th October O2 Academy, Liverpool
A tribute album featuring Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and Beachwood Sparks among others was announced yesterday along with details of a new Neal Casal Music Foundation (NCMF) which has been created “to honour the memory of the late great, multi-dimensional artist through an ongoing series of charitable endeavors.” The initial focus of the foundation is to provide instruments and lessons to students in New Jersey and New York state schools where Casal was born and raised, as well as to make donations to mental health organizations that support musicians in need. NCMF is being spearheaded by Neal’s longtime manager Gary Waldman along with a team of Casal’s friends.
A first round of funding for the foundation is being raised through a Kickstarter campaign comprised of two primary packages: a 30-plus song tribute album, ‘Highway Butterfly: The Songs of Neal Casal’ and a coffee table photography book, ‘Tomorrow’s Sky: Photographs by Neal Casal.’
“In a note left behind, Neal told the story of how he got his first guitar when he was 13,” explains Waldman. “As he explained it, ‘I remember the day on one of those drives where dad asked what I wanted for Christmas and I said an Atari, and he said ‘c’mon Neal, you can do better than that. I always see you with your radio playing music, do you want more records? Do you want to play an instrument? Anything but Atari y’know? It’s just going to collect dust after a few months, I want to get you something useful.’ I sheepishly said I like guitar, and his eyes lit up and he said, ‘sure i’ll get you a guitar, at least you’ll be learning something.’ So that was it, my life was set right there. I remember the exact place where we were when he said it. We were passing that reservoir that’s in between Oak Ridge, NJ and route 23 into NY state.’ So with that in mind, the concept for the foundation was born. We will also donate a large portion of proceeds to MusiCares, Backline and other mental health organizations for musicians. This was also a specific wish of Neal’s and we have already donated over $25,000 to MusiCares from our preliminary fundraiser at the Capitol Theatre tribute concert for Neal on September 25, 2019.”
‘Highway Butterfly: The Songs of Neal Casal’ will be a double CD/triple vinyl album celebrating the prolific body of work Casal left behind over the course of 14 studio albums. Recording sessions for the project began in February led by co-producers Dave Schools of Widespread Panic and recording engineer/producer Jim Scott at PLYRZ Studios in Valencia, CA. Over 30 artists have been confirmed to appear, including Lucinda Williams, Jonathan Wilson, Phil Lesh and The Terrapin Family Band, Cass McCombs, Steve Earle, Warren Haynes, Jaime Wyatt, Shooter Jennings and Robert Randolph & The Family Band among numerous others. The first single and video from the recording was captured during those initial sessions in February. It features Billy Strings with Circles Around the Sun performing ‘All The Luck In The World’ which you can watch below.
“It’s been overwhelming to record these talented artists as they put their own spin on Neal’s songs,” says Schools. “It speaks volumes to the high quality of his song writing and to the depth of love and appreciation that his peers had for him.”
The upcoming tribute Highway Butterfly: The Songs of Neal Casal, a 5-LP box set featuring Neal’s friends, colleagues, and admirers paying tribute to the prolific musician’s immense body of work.
Today the “second” single is out – Neal’s dear friends Beachwood Sparks (whom Neal played, toured, and recorded with) and GospelbeacH (of which Neal was a founding member) release their version of “You Don’t See Me Crying,” with Neal’s photographs brought to life by the brilliant Pooley at Woom Studio.
The 41-song box set is available for pre-order now and will be released on November 12th.
One of Neal’s other last wishes left behind was that a book be made of the photographs he had taken while travelling the world over the last 20 years. ‘Tomorrow’s Sky: Photographs by Neal Casal’ is a 240-page, hard cover, coffee table book that presents over 250 of his photos. The book is broken up into six sections entitled Surf, Road, Rooms, Humans, Travel and Music—all subjects near and dear to Casal. Each section is described as “a deep reflection of where Neal was in his life, whether backstage with his band, in a recording studio with Willie Nelson, an empty stretch of highway through a tour bus windshield, or on the beach with a surfboard.” The photographs were carefully curated by Ricki Blakesberg using Neal’s Instagram, Tumblr and photo albums as a guide, while the book’s producer is Neal’s close friend and legendary photographer, Jay Blakesberg.
“‘Tomorrow’s Sky’ is a look at the world seen through the eyes of Neal Casal. Neal was a stealth photographer who always carried his camera and documented the people, places and scenes as they passed before him,” says Jay Blakesberg. “The photos are intimate, beautiful and from the hip. Nothing is set up, it is real life in real time.”
Highway Butterfly: The Songs Of Neal Casal
Confirmed Artists & Track Listing
Aaron Lee Tasjan – “Traveling After Dark”
Beachwood Sparks – “You Don’t See Me Crying”
Billy Strings w/ Circles Around the Sun – “All The Luck In The World”
Britton Buchanan – “Willow Jane”
Cass McCombs – “Miss It When It’s Gone”
Courtney Jaye – “Grand Island”
Dori Freeman & Teddy Thompson – “Sweeten The Distance”
Hannah Cohen & Sam Evian – “Junkyard In The Sun”
Hazeldine – “Today I’m Gonna Bleed”
Hiss Golden Messenger – TBD
Jaime Wyatt – “Need Shelter”
Jason Crosby – “Pray Me Home”
Jesse Aycock – “The Losing End Again”
Jimmy Herring w/ Circles Around the Sun – “Bird With No Name”
Johnathan Rice – “Me & Queen Sylvia”
Jonathan Wilson – TBD
Kenny Roby – “Too Much To Ask”
Lauren Barth – “Lost Satellite”
Leslie Mendelson – “Feel No Pain”
Lucinda Williams – TBD
Mapache – “The Wisest of the Wise”
Marcus King & Eric Krasno – “No One Above You”
Phil Lesh & The Terrapin Family Band – TBD
Robbi Robb – “I Will Weep No More”
Robert Randolph & The Family Band – TBD
Shooter Jennings – “Maybe California”
Steve Earle – “Highway Butterfly”
Todd Sheaffer – “December”
Vetiver – “White Fence, Round House”
Victoria Reed – “Angel & You’re Mine”
Warren Haynes – “Free To Go”
Zephaniah OHora – TBD
