Reed Turchi - #Live And Direct - October 23rd, 2020
Reed Turchi releases two albums ‘I Have Chosen Love’ & ‘Creosote Flats’ on February 19th, 2021.
I HAVE CHOSEN LOVE
'I've Chosen Love' is an album of two parts, a yin-and-yang of both production techniques and recording mentality. Half of the songs were written using "love" as a lyrical cornerstone, and built on a foundation of soul and blues inspiration, written and mixed in Memphis with the spirit of STAX, Al Green, and Isaac Hayes hovering near, but recorded in the funky blues-rock studio Bud's Recording Service in Austin.
These songs, "I've Chosen Love", "Tell Somebody What Love Is," "Don't Let Love Slip Away", and "Keep on Keepin On" were all built with a big studio band, around the core of double-drummers Johnny Radelat (Gary Clark Jr) and Lemuel Hayes (Cindy Wilson), with Anthony Farrell (JJ Grey & Mofro / Greyhounds) on bass. As the tracks grew, Anthony Farrell pushed them from roots-rock to a more cinematic scope with his layered synth work, Art Edmaiston brought a true Memphis vibe with saxophone on "Keep On", and vocal performances by Heather Moulder and Kathleen Turchi made the album a collective rather than front-man-only effort.
On the flip-side of these songs, the rest of the album was recorded well into the COVID quarantine, outdoors in the backyard on a late summer night in Nashville, surrounded by cicadas. In contrast to the studio-tight sound, these more extended tracks feature a purely neighborhood band, playing only for themselves, and in celebration of being able to make music in a time without the usual shows, sessions, or collaborations. With an all-Mississippi rhythm section of Wallace Lester (Como Mama's, Reverend John Wilkins) on drums and Lee McAlilly on bass hypnotically grooving, and Heather Moulder's keyboards serving double-duty between rhythm section and lead, there couldn't be a better dance floor for the twin guitars of Reed Turchi and Ben Sparaco to spin through.
Thanks to the state of the world beyond anyone's control, 'I've Chosen Love' has become an amazingly appropriate album of the times, a combination of the carefully-planned out and produced recording sessions, and the freely improvised, of-the-moment joy in spontaneous performance with a group of friends under the summer moon.
Under summer moon --
cicada rhythm
all night long
CREOSOTE FLATS
Creosote Flats is a geographic term for the soft-sloping steppes that lead to canyon lands and cliffs, and which are a favorite environment of the creosote bush, which gives the desert it's particular "rain" smell. Creosote is ancient -- there is a colony still living that's nearly 12,000 years old, and driving through much of the desert in Arizona and California, it's the dominant plant on the horizon, perfuming the air.
'Creosote Flats' as an album aims to evoke the multi-sensory experience of the Sonoran desert that has brought inspiration my whole life: I've gone out there annually since I was a kiddo, and before I was born my parents lived out there, so returning always feels like revisiting the world before me.
In 2014, on tour in Europe driving through the alps with Adriano Viterbini, I was first introduced to Saharan Desert Blues -- that floating, levitating pulse -- and immediately knew that I wanted to try and create a music that drew from some of those rhythms, but talked about and was grounded in the desert around Tucson, the desert that has called to me.
So, on multiple trips to Tucson, I would wake up before dawn and drive out into Saguaro National Park with an acoustic guitar and a field recorder, and sit playing and singing to the sunrise and the birds -- sometimes letting the landscape do the singing and only playing instrumentally -- and listen back to find what sounded like the most accurate representation of the feelings and place I hoped to somehow translate to tape.
Gradually, from that process, themes and songs emerged. The lyrics are grounded in simple, visceral language based on observations of what I saw around me, and yet, larger metaphorical meanings slowly unspooled on their own accord, and gave the album its shape.
Sonically, I knew I wanted layers of texture and polyrhythm, so I brought the tracks back to Nashville and gathered musicians that were interested in exploring this sound with me -- Mike Meadows and Lemuel Hayes on drums, Heather Moulder on keyboards, Lee McAlilly on bass. Similarly to writing the songs, I only provided loose direction for those additional parts, instead allowing the energy of the music, and of photos and videos of the desert I brought in, to shape the musical mentality.
The album is intimate, and personal, but I believe that the sense of spaciousness, nature, and temporality in this world are universal themes.
- Reed Turchi