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Tom Freund // East of Lincoln

Over the course of his career, singer/songwriter and Americana artist Tom Freund has released more than a dozen records, collaborated with legends such as Elvis Costello and Jackson Browne, pulled a half-decade stint on bass for alt-country pioneers The Silos, and has shared bills with everyone from Matthew Sweet to Guided by Voices. Freund’s intimate, heartfelt new solo album, East of Lincoln, chronicles a personal journey along the path from self doubt to enlightenment. “Time to take the wheel and turn this thing around / Time to make a deal and see what’s going down,” he affirms on “Runaround.” Freund takes his time and lets these new songs simmer, and that—along with memorable guest spots from longtime friend and collaborator Ben Harper and an all-star cast of session players—is a big part of the record’s charm.

Quietly reveling in its unhurried pace, East of Lincoln sticks in the mind long after listening. Within the record’s framework, Freund tackles progress, hope, and the corporatization of his beloved Venice Beach, which he captures as a bittersweet vortex of vanishing beauty and possibility. “I know I’m no saint, but I know when something is good and when it ain’t,” he sings on the title track, mourning Venice’s fading allure while basking in its once-electric atmosphere. The album dances on the edge of a stark duality: the sun-drenched SoCal beach town’s demise and Freund’s own eventual growth arc. “Better start swimming toward the shore,” he urges on “Abandoning the Ship.”

Much of the record—co-produced by Freund and Sejo Navajas (Smoke Season’s Gabrielle Wortman, Vintage Trouble)—is devastatingly raw. The primarily acoustic arrangements are livened up with some spectacular drumming from Matt Johnson (St. Vincent, Jeff Buckley) and Michael Jerome (Toadies, John Cale, Blind Boys of Alabama), pedal and lap steel from Ben Peeler (Dawes, Shelby Lynne, Father John Misty), keys from Rami Jaffe (Foo Fighters, Ryan Adams) and Chris Joyner (Sara Bareilles, Rickie Lee Jones) and violin from Jessy Greene (Wilco, The Jayhawks). But even with all these studio heavyweights on call, Freund is front and center on the record, singing and playing an eclectic mix of instruments including guitar, mandolin, ukulele, synth and his signature upright bass.

Ben Harper, who produced Freund’s 2008 record Collapsible Pains, lends his vocals to “Abandoning the Ship” and supplies steel guitar to ethereal closing track, “Dream On (Believe in Yourself).” Grammy-winning mixer Jim Scott, known for his work with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Wilco, Ron Sexmsith, Alejandro Escovedo, Lucinda Williams and many more, steps in for several sterling moments as well, leaving his sonic stamp on title song “East of Lincoln,” dreamy standout “Homer Simpson’s Clouds (Day of the Locust)” and dusky saloon romper “Poached Eggs.”

In many ways, Freund’s entire life and career have been leading up to this moment. He’s spent much of his time traversing genres, melding whatever sounds have happened to catch his whimsy with his unmistakable, earthbound songwriting. Back in high school, Freund played bass in the jazz ensemble and performed in productions such as Swing. A few years later, he enjoyed a brief stint in the off-Broadway scene and took classes at Columbia University in New York, later transferring to Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., but when music came knocking again, Freund answered.

His very first album was 1992’s Pleasure and Pain, a duo set with Ben Harper. For the next five years, he also toured and recorded with The Silos before releasing North American Long Weekend, his 1998 solo debut on Mercury Records. Moving ahead into the new millenium, Freund churned out several additional records while also assisting with projects from Mandy Moore, Rachael Yamagata, Graham Parker and other notable artists. From a handful of EPs to his 2007 kids record Hug Trees and 2011’s The Edge of Venice to his appearance playing alongside Parker in 2012 Judd Apatow comedy This is 40, Freund’s career has been a dynamic affair, and that includes plenty of work in film and TV.

His songs have been featured on series such as Better Things, Parenthood and One Tree Hill, and for his latest television project, forthcoming Amazon show Pete The Cat, Freund has co-written, sung and played songs with Elvis Costello, KT Tunstall, Dave Matthews and Diana Krall, and has also co-written the show’s theme song with creator Swampy Marsh (Phineas and Pherb). Costello takes lead vocals on each episode’s opening theme with Freund handling backing vocals and most of the instruments. Freund also co-wrote and sings the show’s end-credits song, “Go Pete Go.” All 14 episodes of the animated series are scheduled for release this September.

East of Lincoln builds on Freund’s legacy while pushing beyond his comfort zone. “Angelus” is a groovy, organ-doused opener, and “Freezer Burn” a vulnerable mid-tempo affair reflecting on personal flaws in the wake of a breakup. “I was running on hope and fumes,” he sings. And where “London Bound Lady” is feathery and sweet, “Broke Down Jubilee” is gutting and mournful, glimmering with tears and silver-lined strings.

Freund’s new record is a potent reminder that life is measured not just by our successes, but by how we choose to grow from our failures.

East of Lincoln is out Sept. 7 on Surf Road Records.

 

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Lyman Ellerman // I Wish I Was A Train

Dark times can often yield the most outstanding work. Walking the fine line between honky-tonk heroism and hand-sewn Americana, Lyman Ellerman culls together vast stylistic influences from the burnt, deeply-troubled edges of Townes Van Zandt to the polished but expansive approach of The Eagles. Having already shared stages with David Allan Coe, Dallas Moore, and Ward Davis, Ellerman is poised to reach the Americana masses with his forthcoming record I Wish I Was A Train, twisting his poetic grandeur into honestly grim reflections of addiction, loss, recovery and heartache.

“Sometimes I wish I was a train / Pulling memories and mothers, outlaws and lovers / I could disconnect the pleasure from the pain,” he sings on the titular cut, longing to be able to not feel much of anything. That unshakable anguish is pinned prevalently onto the album, yielding often bone-crushing magnificence between the rustle of death and self-preserved liberation. Fleeting memories haunt him, and try as he might, Ellerman can’t seem to shake the past.

He’s no ordinary man, either, as he measures his heart in drops of pain, which bend and break off in his hands in various musical forms. “Because of You” is the oddball of the bunch, a razzle-dazzle blend of blues and jazz, built upon a three-piece of only electric guitar, bass and drums. “Fallin’,” co-written with Jeremy Holt, unravels a booze-induced tale of gypsy love, while “Shinin’ on Elizabeth” honors his wife with tender, rosy lyricism. Elsewhere, in one of his most visceral compositions, he steps into the role of “The Addict,” a swelling, acoustic-rendered mid-tempo dedicated to his late son, who struggled much of his adult life with drug addiction. “The absence of my fear, you try so hard to understand / Through this stained glass reflection of where I’ve been and who I am,” he sings, wandering ghost-like back through one particularly “baffling” conversation he had with his son. “At the time, he was using and trying to get me to accept him the way that he was,” he says. “Of course, I accepted him, but I told him I couldn’t really understand where he was coming from, from a clean person’s point of view.”

Banged-up and bruised, Ellerman came to even great understanding through turning his son’s indescribable pain into something tangible and real. The song itself was penned long before his son passed, and while he bares the brunt of that weight even more these days, there is a sliver of hope to be had. “He got to hear the song. I wasn’t going to do anything with it unless I had his OK. He thought it could help somebody. So, we decided to add it onto the record. I’m still hoping it can touch somebody along the way.”

Teaming up with long-time collaborator Jason Morgan, Ellerman settles into a rather dark place and allows himself to feel each emotional punch. I Wish I Was a Train barrels right for the heart. “The clock on the wall echos out of time with your steps down the hall / And each tick of the tock is like a bomb going off, reminds you how far you’ve gone wrong,” he wields on stunner “Nobody Knows You (Like I Do),” pacing the album with the delicate balance of gloom and hope. “Bigger Plans” chugs along at a brisker pace, electric guitars pumping on all cylinders. “When you tally your possessions, what will they buy you on that day / Will your prominence and stature keep the free from harm’s way,” he dares, a malevolent force clouding overhead. His voice is as sinister as it is somehow soothing, almost transforming into this all-knowing presence taking your hand and reassuring you everything will be OK in the end.

As is often his way, Ellerman let the songs guide him. The album has roots reaching back several years, with songs like “Here Comes Tomorrow,” which book ends the record with a shot of glistening optimism, finding their place as crucial to his journey. “There’s nothing that’s so bad that tomorrow can’t fix,” he says of the song, which sees the singer-songwriter chewing up the bad times to get to the good. “Get in my car and drive so far the highway can’t let go / Out past the sun where wild horses run / They can’t be saddled or broke,” he sings.

Ellerman’s story is your classic tale of a small-town boy with big dreams. Out of central Illinois, he picked up guitar in his mid-teens and played in his first band at 18, shaking up shows all over town. He was later struck to hone his songwriting ability and headed down south to Mississippi and Louisiana. When he found himself in Baton Rouge, he holed up in a local studio to record and found his way to Bee Gees bassist Harold Cowart, who helped him produce many of his earliest recordings. In between touring, Ellerman made many a trip to Nashville and eventually made contact with a label executive of the now-defunct Universal South, a subsidiary of the much larger Universal Music Group.

Upon moving to Nashville permanently, Ellerman struck his first publishing deal in 2005 and went on to land more than 20 independent cuts on various fringe, alt-country releases and collaborate with such mainstay songwriters as Marshall Tucker Band founding member and guitarist George McCorkle, Larry Steele (.38 Special), Buddy Brock (Tracy Byrd, Aaron Tippin), Wil Nance (Brad Paisley, George Strait), Bill Shore (Garth Brooks) and Keesy Timmer (Kelsea Ballerini). His song “Drink Your Wine” (from the Get Loose record) was featured in the 2016 award-winning independent film, Last Call at Murray’s, starring John Savage and Michael Gross. When the deal expired three years later, Ellerman turned his sights to stretching his creative wings as an artist, and as luck would have it, he befriended Jason Morgan, who went on to produce Ellerman’s next two albums.

I Wish I Was a Train serves as not only a natural progression to the duo’s collaborative efforts but spotlights a rather important artistic mile marker in Ellerman’s career. With such a sturdy foundation of life experiences, Ellerman crafts a cohesively somber project and offers up sage wisdom about life’s dark and winding roads. “If that road gets you in its ditches, boy, it’ll never let you go,” he remarks on a Merle Haggard-sized deep cut.

The charm not only lies in Ellerman’s phrasing but the hi-fi production quality, owed in large part to a respectful give and take in the studio. “Jason is really proficient. When it comes to ideas, he can arrange them up and steer me in a direction I wouldn’t have gone without him,” says Ellerman of their ongoing partnership. “A lot of times, if I hear something in my head, melodically, and I don’t really feel like I can create that, he usually can. Then, I can add to that. It’s really been a labor of love.”

I Wish I Was A Train is due August 10th on Woodshed Resistance Records.

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“Walking the fine line between honky-tonk heroism and hand-sewn Americana, Lyman Ellerman culls together vast stylistic influences from the burnt, deeply-troubled edges of Townes Van Zandt to the polished but expansive approach of The Eagles.” – Glide

“Feels like a long drive with the windows down on a warm summer day. It’s rapturous; and we could all use a ray of hope right now.” – Wide Open Country

“Ellerman takes the poignant subject matter on with a poetic depth, crafting a world with this soundscape that nearly creates a tangible image of its events carrying out before the listener.” – PopMatters

“Unshakable anguish is pinned prevalently onto the album, yielding often bone-crushing magnificence between the rustle of death and self-preserved liberation.” – No Depression

“His voice is as smooth as honey but the lyrics cut through the soul because they are so revealing and honest.” – Rock the Pigeon

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Vive L’Acadie

Buried deep underneath blankets of wooly southern rock, gritty songwriting and soaring odes to lost love, The Mallett Brothers are entrenched in the dense forests, majestic mountains and icy beaches of their Maine homeland. Their rock ‘n roll resides inside of a weathered and lived-in, rootsy Americana built by brothers Luke and Will Mallett and band. It’s that distinctive sound that’s helped them to share stages with both critical favorites like Drive-By Truckers, Shovels and Rope & The Felice Brothers and legends like Phish drummer and singer Jon Fishman (who will be hopping aboard the band’s spring tour this year), The Allman Brothers, and many more. Their new album, Vive L’Acadie (out June 15), is an ode to all things French-Canadian.

“Vive L’Acadie,” the title track, came out of a David Lynchian trip the band made to Fort Kent, Maine. “We were driving down the road on Main Street,” says Luke. “We turned on the radio and it was playing all these French versions of pop-country songs. It felt like we were in a different world. Later that night, an old man in a bar was yelling “Vive L’Acadie”. Turns out, that’s the Acadian battle cry! The Acadians wound up being Cajun, but they’re a French, Canadian and Irish mix of people that ended up in the woods up north. Their influence is all over Maine. Our grandfather came from Salmon River, Nova Scotia. If you go back up there, there’s a whole cemetery full of Malletts.”

Stories like these illustrate the celebratory and thought-provoking tone of the album. “Long Black Braid” is a funereal tale, darkened with an Edgar Allan Poe edge and combed over by thick Drive-By Trucker brushes, while “Timberline (High Times)” deals with working class people keeping their chin up. “My brother told me this story,” says Luke, “about how he met someone at one of our shows who fit the exact description of the person in Timberline,” referencing the line “Two tours of duty with the green berets / Now you’re all stove up in the head. Two tours of duty as a captain now you got trouble just remembering what the foreman said.” “He was a veteran who had something really bad happen to him, and was coming to terms with a return to normal life” he remembers. Despite the song’s heaviness, he stresses “it is a hopeful song,” bolstered with clean, fiery fiddle and brisk drum echoes.

Vive L’Acadie borrows the charm of a Dick Curless record, harkening to “Tombstone Every Mile,” which howls with wind sounds, spunky guitar and Curless’ trembling bass voice. Similarly, such album cuts as “Losin’ Horses” and “Good as It Gets” careen across styles, filtered through mud and grit between their teeth.

Recorded at Acadia Recording in Portland, the album came in pieces over the course of several months. By last September, they had more than enough songs to sift through, picking ten that would quickly become a vigorous exploration of the band’s heritage and cultural makeup. This is their most rugged collection yet, building off 2017’s concept album, The Falling of the Pine.

The six-piece have had multiple lineup changes and stylistic shifts over the years, occasionally drawing from founding member Luke Mallett’s high school days of being in a hardcore band, then spitting rhymes in his hip hop collective (he has a particular love of Digable Planets, Gang Starr and Wu Tang), and his brother’s proclivity for tight, blustering rock and bluegrass-tinged guitar playing. Their music stirs feelings of good times even when they are spilling out heartfelt stories and ambitious musical licks. The current lineup of Luke Mallett (vocals/guitar), Will Mallett (vocals/guitar), Nick Leen (bass), Wally Wenzel (dobro/electric guitar/vocals), Chuck Gange (drums) and Andrew Martell (fiddle/guitar/mandolin) is stronger than it has ever been. Each player injects the music with electric precision, as if the sky has been torn open and a string of lightning bolts strike the parched earth.

The Mallett Brothers Band was founded in 2009 with a slightly different lineup, owed in part to life’s gentle tides rocking people in and out of each other’s lives, but the love of the music kept them together despite all odds. As brothers, Luke and Will were exposed to the musician’s life early on by their father, who worked with Paul Stookey (of Peter, Paul and Mary) and continues to make music to this day. “He never did anything else but write and play music,” says Luke, “Because of him, I played a little bit of everything, but I didn’t pick up a guitar until I was probably 22 or 23.” Meanwhile, Will played guitar by the time he was 10, largely influenced by his father’s own talents. “I was fortunate enough to inherit some of my dad’s pipes,” says Luke. “He has a strong, really loud voice. I was never the guitar player in the family, but I feel like I can hold my own nowadays.”

The sheer breadth of Vive L’Acadie is astonishing. It’s embedded in classic America. It’s a model T cruising along the roadway, a steam locomotive barreling down the track. It’s a stormy evening when the sun is just perched below the horizon. It represents the struggles of everyday workers who want nothing more than to find their purpose and feed their families. It’s carved from years of blood, sweat and tears and the dedication to the craft shows in spades. The album is set for release on June 15 and their spring tour launches early April.

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“Their dense, world-worn roots music is folk-rock at its finest point.” – PopMatters

“They’ve remained steadfast in delivering heartfelt songs with emotional lyricism, vivid imagery, and dynamic musical tones.” – No Depression

“A barn-burner…dagger chops…no dull notes.” – Glide Magazine

“Viva L’Acadie, the new album by The Mallett Brothers Band is a whiskey-soaked old-time Acadian hoedown and everyone’s invited. It’s also a love story to a region and a people – a fading culture caught up in the homogeneity of modern life.” – Folk Radio UK

“Fueled by rootsy America and good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll alongside their love of storytelling and imagery.” –Wide Open Country

Publicist: Rachel Hurley

“Baby Robot Media, and Rachel Hurley, in particular, were an absolute pleasure to work with. We launched the campaign with the goal of getting some national press for our latest release, and Baby Robot delivered. From creating a timeline to maximize impact, to tour support and leveraging local press on the road, to hanging out and drinking beers in Texas, Rachel and the team went above and beyond. Communication was thorough and spot-on, in-depth weekly reports kept us up to date on what was going on, and they managed to make the whole process fun. We’d thoroughly recommend Rachel and the rest of the team at Baby Robot Media for any acts hoping to get their stuff out into the world, and wouldn’t hesitate to work with them again.” – Will Mallett

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Josh King // Into the Blue

On the cover of his solo debut, Into the Blue, Josh King looks ready to toss his Stetson into the ring alongside modern outlaw-country stars like Chris Stapleton and Jamey Johnson. But when you sit down and listen, the music is as much Jon Brion as Johnny Cash. This soon-to-be father—and one-time leader of Greensboro, N.C., indie-folk rockers House of Fools—brings a craftsmanship to his songwriting that walks the line between Dawes & Willie Nelson, Tom Petty & Elliott Smith. His former group earned its keep recording for now-defunct punk/emo imprint Drive-Thru Records and performing alongside acts as varied as Robert Randolph, Leon Russell and Jimmy Eat World.

The music King has constructed on Into the Blue is deeply personal and rooted in mindfully crafted Americana and hummable guitar pop. The album was written during a rocky transitional period in his life, a desolate drug-fueled few years in the wake of his younger days touring with House of Fools. “By the end of that era, I’d given up on my music,” King says. “My favorite thing in the world is to write a song, even if it’s just for me and no one else hears it. But at that point in my life, I wasn’t even doing that—I was just partying as hard as I could.”

Take Into the Blue’s countrified “Follow Through,” for example, penned in the stark aftermath of an all-night bender. “I wrote it at a friend’s house,” King says. “Everybody had finally gone to bed, and I was alone watching the sun rise. The song is a reflection about being selfish and failing to follow through on your commitments.”

At the heart of Into the Blue is a focus on King’s internal struggle to leave his days of recklessness in the rearview. On “The Stranger,” he comes to grips with feelings of isolation once he cuts himself off from his friends at the bars and clubs he used to haunt. “These days, with social media, it’s easy to sit there and watch what’s going on with everybody,” King says. “For a while, I was getting hung up on everything I was missing out on while in this self-imposed exile at home. When you’ve lived so much of your life touring and playing in bands, and then you basically vanish from your hometown scene, it can feel like everybody has forgotten about you.”

But with the help of his old House of Fools bandmate (and co-producer) Jordan Powers, King was inspired to return from his creative hiatus. “Essentially, Jordan told me to stop wallowing and start writing music again so we could record it,” King laughs. “So I did. I pulled myself together, moved into a new house with my girlfriend—who’s now my wife—and I began a new chapter in my life. I quit going out all the time, got focused and wrote this album, drawing from my experiences along the way.”

The song “Friends” reflects back on King’s mixed emotions seeing his old buddy embracing domestic life back when King was still at the bar every night. “The song is about one of my best friends in the world, Joel Kiser, who plays guitar on the album and played with me in House of Fools,” King says. “It was written around the time he told me that he and his wife were having a baby. It’s about friends settling down and me wanting to be happy for them, but being really selfishly bummed out. I didn’t realize until recording the song that it was such a huge turning point in my life—my friends were moving on. But now here I am, newly married with a kid of my own on the way. It all makes sense now.”

After two decades as a professional musician, King has finally found his voice as a songwriter; his melodic roots pop shimmering brilliantly in the Southern sun. Born in Mobile, Ala., and cutting his teeth in the Greensboro scene, with Into the Blue King delivers a hopeful meditation on getting right, forging a bold new path and following it to a sense of purpose. He’s a talented singer-songwriter in the grand North Carolina tradition that also gave us piedmont blues, Link Wray, the dB’s, Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams and Polvo.

One can only hope the lucky stars remain aligned for Josh King as he ventures into this new chapter in his career. His solo debut, Into the Blue, is out August 17.

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“He’s a talented singer-songwriter in the grand North Carolina tradition that also gave us Piedmont blues, Link Wray, the dB’s, Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams and Polvo.” – No Depression

“comes from a time of darkness when all seemed lost both personally and professionally and reflects on the unpredictable nature of life” – Americana UK

“King owns the song by its second verse, passionately imbuing his subtly gritty vocals into his work as a jangle of electric guitars, drums, and harmonies spiral throughout the remainder of the song.” – PopMatters

Publicist: Rachel Hurley

“We had high expectations for Baby Robot due to their fabulous track record, but Rachel and company exceeded them! Not only was Rachel an absolute pleasure to work with, but she also produced fabulous results and went well above and beyond her obligation. We can’t wait to continue this relationship, release after release!” Josh King and Jordan Powers