Stan Ridgway Sets New Album Release
06/28/2010
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Stan Ridgway will release his new album, Neon Mirage, on August 24, 2010. Here is the official word: Neon Mirage is arguably the most emotionally revealing, musically far-ranging — dare we say mature? — album of the L.A. singer-songwriter's accomplished career. Yet it's also a project whose troubled circumstances might tempt Stan to paraphrase John Lennon's familiar wisdom: Life is what happens when you're busy making another album.Indeed, in many ways Neon Mirage can't help but feel like an elegy to the colleague and family Stan lost in the midst of writing and recording its dozen, typically eclectic songs: gifted Texas-born violinist/session player Amy Farris; a beloved uncle; and the man who helped forge the very foundations of Ridgway's unique outlook on life and music, his own father. "Events like that can't help but have an impact on the music you're making at the time," Stan admits. "You'd be lying to yourself — and your listeners — if you thought otherwise." "You never really have a choice about the tone and subject matter of the records you make," confides veteran L.A. singer-songwriter Stan Ridgway about his new album, Neon Mirage. "At least I don't. They're obsessions, really. Things happen, good and bad. And for most people, the passing of a parent or a close friend has an impact. It's really about the music, and how it heals the mind. The records I grew up with still inform me, and the best were like an inner journey — mixing up blues, jazz, pop and country to make something fresh and, in the end, positive. But you can't ignore the darker side of things, either."
Ridgway quickly sets the album's tone with a warm, accomplished recasting of "Big Green Tree" from Black Diamond (his forceful 1996 debut as an independent) produced by Dave Alvin. The L.A. roots rock legend reinvents it here in a gentler, more hopeful ethos around Ridgway and his longtime keyboardist/collaborator Pietra Wexstun, with Brett Simmons on upright bass and Amy Farris, then a member of Alvin's own Guilty Women ensemble, on violin. Alvin had heard Stan perform the song solo at a special show for mutual friend and fellow songwriting legend Peter Case, and early sessions also yielded Neon Mirage's memorable, Alvin-produced cover of Bob Dylan's elegy to his own fallen hero, "Lenny Bruce."
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