For the ex-Dolly Varden front man’s sixth solo album, Steve Dawson assembled a ‘dream band’ of Chicago musicians and recorded the ten tunes live in the studio.
The material reflects on loss and hope stemming from what Dawson calls the “ghosts from the past [which] keep showing up.”
There’s an air of resignation behind songs like Walking Cane and Sooner Than Expected. In the former he sings “Have we learned nothing? Here we go again.”
Leadville is a less than flattering portrait of the small town in Idaho where he spent his teenage years, a place that “once was a big time boom town, now it’s two stoplights, six churches, and a jail.”
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The brooding quality of the songs, bordering on quiet despair, is a bit of a downer so it’s a relief to hear I Am Glad To be Alive in which he sings with his wife Diane Christiansen.
Ingrid Graudins sadly passed away shortly after recording vocals on the album’s final track Weather In The Desert, a song that encapsulates the low key Americana of this well-crafted but overly subdued album.
Steve Dawson’s website
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