Juno-winner Steve Dawson is releasing a whole pile of new music starting on March 18 with a new album called Gone Long Gone.
We’re thrilled to premiere the lyric video for the song “Bad Omen” here on Roots Music Canada today.
“The riff and musical part was something that I started playing around with during soundcheck while on tour with Birds of Chicago,” Steve told us over messenger.
“It’s a specific riff that really only works on the lap steel or weissenborn, which is what I had with me on their tour. I put it together and was writing a batch of songs with Matt Patershuk and sent him what I had so far, and he wrote the lyrics. We tossed stuff back and forth for a while, but it was written quickly that way.
“I recorded it with some of my favourite musicians on the planet; Jay Bellerose is on drums, who is one of the most creative musicians I know, and Kevin McKendree plays the organ. He’s someone I’ve gotten to know here in Nashville and is a stellar organ and piano player. Jeremy Holmes plays the bass, and we really tried to get a live feel and fairly organic sounds, and I think we pulled that off, even though we were in three different cities at the time.”
Like many new albums that have come out lately, Gone Long Gone was a pandemic project for Steve, the result of forced downtime brought on by public health measures.
Of course, it’s kind of funny to think of Steve having downtime given that the guy is also a highly in-demand Nashville-based record producer and the host of the Music Makers and Soul Shakers Podcast when he’s not writing and recording his own music.
But I guess when you’re also used to playing more than 100 shows a year with artists like Birds of Chicago and Matt Andersen, freeing up that time in the schedule gives you room to write a lot of music.
Because Gone Long Gone is the first of three albums Steve plans to release this year.
A lot of the music was co-written with Alberta artist Matt Patershuk – the first time Steve’s done a major collaboration with another artist – and we can’t wait to hear more.
