Yay, today, ok at last. In autumn 2018 I went to Nashville, Tennessee, to work with Salim Nourallah and his band, Richard on keys, Joe on guitars, Jason on bass and drums, and John on drums and bass and in a co-production role with Salim and as a fifth member of his band. After Nashville we retired to Dallas where all but Joe live (he lives in San Antonio) and worked on overdubs, mixing was next…then the pandemic hit. Finally, the album is now mixed and will be released in early 2023 but before that, we have the See You In Marfa EP from those sessions released today on Bandcamp. A CD is also available and streaming will be from August 19th. The lead track on the EP will be Hold On To The Night, complete with a video featuring an animated yours truly and co-written (a bit) by me.

This whimsical video was done by an Australian videographer/musician, Jordan Thompson:

 
Below there is the text from Salim’s FB page with the short version of how it all came together and below the text is a link to a magazine interview with the longer story. I hope you enjoy it.

It’s a big day here in Nourallahland. I’ve been waiting 3 1/2 years to release Hold On To The Night. We recorded it in Nashville in September 2018 with Marty Willson-Piper augmenting our band. Marty also helped me finish the tune. It’s part of a five-song EP available today on Bandcamp. Ten more songs from the sessions will be coming out on a full-length LP top of next year!

GLIDE MAGAZINE PREMIERE

Here on the Northern Beaches, we went into Oceanic Studio, Jim Moginie from Midnight Oil’s studio to set up some sounds with Brent, the in-house engineer, and DC who has been recording the backing tracks for the next Arktik Lake songs (and playing bass). We tried some amps and some guitars, some mics and the local coffee shop and dialled in some sounds for a start on Monday. This was my first meet with DC, and tonight I also finally met Nigel who plays the drums with Tamam Shud and appears on the first Arktik Lake EP and the tracks we are working on.

We started early today, getting up at 5.30 AM, Olivia and I ate breakfast and went down to the beach to see the sunrise. Olivia paddled and I took tons of pix of the wildlife, mostly exotic birds.

But now, almost 1 AM, after stretching out the jetlag, it’s time to collapse. Goodnight.

Music today has been many things but what we heard the most of was Big Star’s #1 Record (1973). A regular visitor to my ears.

Music Of The Daze