Blue Cactus's Stranger Again Out May 7th - Preorders now open
Steph on the making of Blue Cactus’s forthcoming record, Stranger Again:
“Much of this album was written during an intensive week-long artist residency at Wildacres Retreat, in the North Carolina mountains. Between late night musings of our mutual nostalgia for video rental stores and hours spent waiting by the radio for our favorite songs to be played, once signs of our youth now-turned relics of the past. Between the stillness of cicada song bleeding through the walls of the hundred year old cabin we called home that week in August and the rise and fall of the shape note singers, reverberating over the Blue Ridge in perfect harmony with that magical place. The rest came in spurts at home when we were able to make the stillness and find the songs we had been carrying.
We weren’t in much of a hurry to record these songs as we were to get to know them, to flesh out the simple skeletons we had assembled. Throughout the course of touring and playing these songs live with our band, they came to life, and we knew we had found the people who needed to make this record with us: our bass player and co-producer, Alex Bingham (Hiss Golden Messenger); our drummer and creative collaborator, Gabe Anderson (Sleepy Cat Records); and Nashville-based pedal steel player Whit Wright (Joshua Hedley, Elizabeth Cook) who joined us for the eight day session at Bedtown Studios, Bingham’s lakehouse-turned recording studio in Roanoke, VA.”
Those who pre-order vinyl or CD will get a limited edition linoprint designed and printed by Steph Stewart. They are beautiful and we love them!