The video for “LA,” the opener to Scott Strickland’s new self-titled album, is a work of art in itself. Filmed largely on the Pacific coast alongside the town of the same name, the video features dramatic and sweeping footage of Strickland strolling on the beach and watching the waves.
The images emphasize the loneliness and longing of the lyrics, which Strickland sings with passion over an extremely spacious piano arrangement. This might be the best video and song to come out of Austin in the first half of 2022.
Filmed by Strickland and Justin Borja, one of Strickland’s students when he taught video and photography classes, the clip was shot during the pandemic. “Airbnb was super cheap because no one was traveling,” Strickland recalls. They used a drone for wide-view footage, carefully timing their shots to capture sunset light and most empty beaches.
The song makes a statement early on about Strickland’s impressive growth. He released back-to-back EPs in 2015 and 2016 shortly after moving here from Nacogdoches, where he had attended Stephen F. Austin State University’s undergraduate and graduate school. He studied film there while playing in bands on the side, but his move to Live Music Capital was not motivated by a desire to become a professional musician.
Soon enough, however, he had formed the Scott Strickland Band and was playing a residency gig at the downtown Four Seasons hotel. They played songs from the EPs, focusing on material that had a band-oriented vibe. In the meantime, Strickland made some duet recordings with fellow guitarist Eddie Schmidt. But he had also begun to write more singer-songwriter oriented material that would become the basis for the self-titled album.
A turning point came when he bonded with drummer Michael Ingber and Eric Harrison, co-owners of Studio 601 in South Austin. After recording a demo of his song “Drive All Night” with them, he was sold.
“I was like, ‘This is amazing, this is exactly what I wanted,'” Strickland recalled. “I really needed people I could trust to bring my vision to fruition. And it kind of became our vision.”
Ingber and Harrison also brought in Andrew Nolte, who worked on several of their studio projects. A talented composer and string arranger in addition to playing the piano, Nolte helped give the album a cinematic feel.
“He arrived fully prepared, but he was also receptive” to the songwriter and producer’s ideas, Strickland says. “It wouldn’t have been a record without him. The way he feels about music, I’ve never seen anyone do that. And I never saw his level of dedication either.
After:Our Austin360 Artist of the Month feature on Andrew Nolte
The results are apparent throughout the new album, from the strings swelling on the chorus of “Drawbridge” to the subtle keyboard touches that adorn the beautiful “Skyback” to the soulful blues-funk grooves of “Get Out.” It’s a big step forward for Strickland, and it was meant to be.
“It’s definitely something I wanted to push myself, to see what I could do,” he said. “There was something about needing this thing to be as perfect as possible, until I could stand on a platform and say this is my life’s work.”
Release scheduled for April 29. Out April 30 at Stateside at the Paramount. Here is the video of “LA”:
MORE NEW MUSIC FROM AUSTIN
Here’s a look at some of the other local records released this month.
Willie Nelson, “A Beautiful Era”
The Last of the Austin Legend mixes new songs written with producer Buddy Cannon with thoughtfully chosen tracks by other writers (including the Rodney Crowell/Chris Stapleton opener “I’ll Love You Till the Day I Die”), plus some classic covers (“Tower of Song”, “With a Little Help From My Friends” by the Beatles).
Release scheduled for April 29. April 29-30 at the Moody Center and May 1 in Luck TX. Here is the lyric video for “I will love you until the day I die”:
Buffalo Hunt, “The Ambitions of Ambiguity”
You may know Stephanie Hunt for her roles around 2010 on the television shows “Friday Night Lights” and “Californication.” You may be familiar with Nancy & Beth, her musical collaboration with “Will & Grace” actress Megan Mullally. And you may have heard his sister, Phoebe Hunt, a Nashville singer-songwriter who was born in Austin with the Belleville Outfit over a decade ago.
Now is the time to get to know Buffalo Hunt, his latest musical project and essentially his solo debut. Not that there aren’t talented contributors: the supporting crew on “Ambitions of Ambiguity” includes Shakey Graves (her fiancé) and versatile band The Texas Gentlemen. But the songs are Hunt’s own creations and visions, and his captivating voice carries emotion through songs that range from artfully angular song (opening “Life Not on My Terms”) to lush melodic pop (” Play the Fool”) to the psych tinged with surrealism (“Walkin’ in a TV”).
Hunt still has acting projects on the horizon – she has a role in writer-director Joanna Gleason’s upcoming film ‘The Grotto’ – but her growing interest in music, and specifically her own songs, is a welcome development.
Release scheduled for April 29. Release show April 30 in Parish. Here is the video for “Life Not on My Terms”:
Good looking, ‘Bummer Year’
Press materials distributed by local label Keeled Scales, which released “Bummer Year”, describe Good Looks as a “blue-collar political indie rock band”, while noting that the quartet’s debut album is “a folk record with a true Texas twang, built with the engine of a rock band revving hot, ready to get tricky. That’s a pretty good description of what you’ll hear on this seven-song release from guitarist-vocalist Tyler Jordan, the guitarist Jake Ames, bassist Robert Cherry and drummer Phillip Dunne.
The “political” side of Good Looks is perhaps most evident in the title track. “I couldn’t understand how these people who I knew to be kind, caring and good could get sucked into Donald Trump’s neo-fascist movement,” Jordan says. But he wrote the song not to exhort anyone; “The job at hand is really to meet people where they are,” he says.
A heartbreaking update: Following the release of the band’s April 8 record at the Vegas Hotel, Ames was hit by a car and hospitalized with multiple injuries, including a fractured skull and tailbone. He has since been released from the hospital and is recuperating at home. A crowdfunding page is accepting donations on its behalfwith nearly $60,000 out of a goal of $75,000 already raised.
Released April 8. Here is the video of “Almost Automatic”:
Giulia Millanta, “Woman on the Moon”
On his eighth album, the singer-songwriter from Austin via Italy worked for the third time with co-producer Gabe Rhodes. The two musicians have everything on the album except the drums (covered by local aces John Chipman and Rick Richards), weaving together arrangements of acoustic, electric and nylon-string guitars as well as piano and bass behind the passionate vocals. of Millanta. As in “Tomorrow is a bird” of 2020, the new album complements Millanta’s originals with three songs co-written by Rhodes; this time they add a cover, “The Way That You Are” by longtime Austin singer-songwriter Eliza Gilkyson.
Released April 8. On view May 28 at the Hyatt Regency. Here’s the opening track, “Mad Man on the Moon”:
Jonny Burke, “Behind the Curtain of Pines”
Burke is pretty candid about his run-ins with the law in the chorus of the title track of his new album: “Six months in the county and six years in jail,” he sings. These experiences also inform other songs, including “I Cut Off My Ankle Monitor to Be Here” and a cover of the Sonny Curtis classic “I Fought the Law” featuring Alejandro Escovedo on duet vocals. In the press materials accompanying the album, Burke explains that he sought to “explore all of the events and circumstances surrounding that time and the people I was with while incarcerated.” Produced by Don Cento, the acoustic-oriented country-folk album features backing from multi-instrumentalist Scott Davis, bassist Will Dupuy, violinist Cody Braun (of Reckless Kelly) and drummer Josh Blue.
Release scheduled for April 26. Here is the track “Pipe Bomb Dream”:
Freddie Steady Krc, ‘Dandy’
A longtime local drummer and singer-songwriter, Krc says he calls these roots-rock/pop tracks mostly written in the time of COVID-10 “pandemic prose” or “closure sonnets.” Three Times are newly recorded versions of tracks that have previously surfaced with his bands Shakin’ Apostles and Wild Country. “Dandy” guitarists include his former Explosives bandmate Cam King, John Inmon of the Lost Gonzo Band and Commander ace Cody Bill Kirchen; Other well-traveled local contributors include keyboardist Floyd Domino, saxophonist John Mills and trumpeter Adrian Ruiz.
Released April 15. Here is the title “A Place for Me”:
Russel Taine Jr., “Tales”
They’re a band, not a person, which makes perfect sense once you hear the music, as “Tales” bristles with the kind of rock & roll energy common to classic guitar-bass-drum quartets. This includes frontman Aaron Winston, lead guitarist/backing vocalist Dylan Hill, bassist Justin Winslow and drummer Wes Armstrong. Recorded at Orb Studios and Test Tube in Austin, “Tales” is the band’s first full-length album, following 2019’s “American Dream” EP. Oh, and about that band name, it comes from somewhere noble: Russel Taine Jr. was the pseudonym of Winston’s journalist grandfather when he was covering the Cold War from Moscow in the 20th century.
Release date April 29. Out April 29 at Swan Dive. Here is the track “Something You Said”:
Also released this month
APRIL 1: Rachel Reese“Mother land”; Adm Our Hatley“Winning Ideas”; Black birdEP “Ballad of a Junebug”
APRIL 8: Roxi CoplandEP “I just crazy”
APRIL 15: Robin Mordecai“Portraits” EP
APRIL 22: Lynn Crossette“In the company of a song”; Joel Mullins“Midlife Crisis”
APRIL 29: Anna Larson“Dark Bird” EP
Coming soon
MAY 6: Midland“The Last Resort: Greetings From”
MAY 7: Casper’s Caleb“Woman Boy”
MAY 13: Lyle Lovett“June 12”
MAY 20: John Doe“Fables in a Foreign Land”
MAY 20: Everett Wren“Porch”
MAY 27: Tosca“Osam”
JUNE 3: Adrian Quesada“Psicodelico Boleros”
JUNE 24: Ralph E. White“It’s more in my body than in my head”
JULY 29: Eric Johnson“The book of manufacturing” and “Yesterday meets today”
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