"I worked the graveyard / Back when it used to snow / Tried living two lives / Out of your second story window..."
The beautiful homespun slow dance of "Last Chance" by Oklahoma indie folk artist John Calvin Abney and from his upcoming 7th studio album "Transparent Towns", dropping on September 19th (via his own Tin Canyon Records & Well Kept Secret / Secretly Distribution), feels at once somber but with lightning strikes of joyful hope, a wistful image of times before and maybe wondering how times will turn out. The sensory lean for me is the kind of twangy porch country atmosphere that feels more folk than country, the kind of earnest sound that everyone will appreciate and love no matter what kind of music is at their core gravitational pull. I am loving Abney's vocal sway too and for an old dog like me his emotional vocal countenance had me flashing on a variety of times and artists, everything from "Juanita" by the Flying Burrito Brothers (late 60's / 70's) and Kevin Morby's "Our Moon" circa 2014 and the iconic Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band's "Garden Party" (72). You might have other sonic touchstones based on your age and whose vinyl record collection you perused as a kid.
The Official Video is very cool as well, plus I remember the portastudio that opens the video. That was super high tech way back when. Seeing it brought back memories, made me smile just like "Last Chance" itself.
LINER NOTES (excerpted / bracketed):
[The upcoming record was penned during a period of introspection and convalescence while recovering from vocal cord surgery in 2023. The time to himself, a year without singing and months spent in near total silence, left him contemplating how to trace his experiences within quiet and stillness. The result is a collection of ten songs that seek meaning in the invisible markers of time — old cafes, forgotten voices, small towns transformed by progress and loss.]
AND about "Last Chance":
[“This tune was written in a daydream during a particularly sweltering Texas summer while I was picking up shifts as a landscaper, packing a lunch in the early dawn before the sun pushed down its full weight on the job site. The thought of who I was and the many versions of myself I've become were heavy on my head. The verses are mostly reflections on growing up in Oklahoma and glimpses of jobs and snares I’d find myself in. The bridge and chorus are a conversation with the past, and how there’s no way back to those seemingly golden days and equally troubled times. When you come back to a love, a land, friends, family, or even a bar or a cafe that you spent a brief passage in, you’re never quite sure of the exact moment that marks the end of your chapter there. I try not to be these days, but sometimes I am caught dwelling in the space between now and then, thinking about where I stand today and those final seconds before everything became different."]
[Transparent Towns is Abney's first full-length release since 2022's Tourist, which No Depression called "his most vocally resonant and sonically cohesive project to date." He has since continued to tour as a sideman for artists like John Moreland, S.G. Goodman, Wild Child, and Ben Kweller, while always returning to the birthplace of most of his core memories: Oklahoma. Abney self-produced the new record at Cardinal Song near Oklahoma City, with Michael Trepagnier handling mixing and engineering, and the sessions feature a cast of mostly Sooner State musicians, along with vocal harmony contributions from Moreland and Lydia Loveless.]
[“This record is wrapped around the passage of time," Abney explains, "whether or not we can trust the memories that we swear on, how we forgive ourselves and others as seasons turn, and how we define what is important as we roll the boulder back up the hill. We build these routines and live our stories, we rely on our histories and our memories - spoken and recorded. Now, we’re relying on copies of copies, memories of memories, all packed like sardines into our phones, and we’re losing the ability to tell our own stories. I have to constantly remind myself, as well as redefine what matters at the end of a day.”]
"Down at Julie's, everybody knew me
The years were dominoes
But now we're older, rest upon my shoulder
Then I have to go
Call us secrets
Screamed in microphones
We keep secrets
For folks we used to know
Say don’t think twice
But that’s what my mind does
Could we have known then
Could we have known then
Could we have known then
When our last chance was"
https://www.youtube.com/@johncalvinabney
https://johncalvinabney.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/johncalvinabney/#
https://www.tiktok.com/@johncalvinabney
https://www.facebook.com/johncalvinabney
https://x.com/johncalvinabney
John Calvin Abney rises again from the Oklahoman prairies with his latest album Transparent Towns, available September 19 on his own Tin Canyon Records, via Well Kept Secret / Secretly Distribution. The songs focus on how we remember, and ultimately accept, though he is not always certain the memories we carry adequately mark the moments that make us.
“This record is wrapped around the passage of time, whether or not we can trust the memories that we swear on, how we forgive ourselves and others as seasons turn, and how we define what is important as we roll the boulder back up the hill,” Abney says of Transparent Towns. “We build these routines and live our stories, we rely on our histories and our memories - spoken and recorded. Now, we’re relying on copies of copies, memories of memories, all packed like sardines into our phones, and we’re losing the ability to tell our own stories. I have to constantly remind myself, as well as redefine what matters at the end of a day.”
Transparent Towns is the seventh studio album for Abney, and his first since 2022’s Tourist, which he crafted after spending the pandemic as an itinerant writer. In contrast Abney penned most of the album’s 10 tracks during a period of introspection and convalescence while recovering from vocal cord surgery in 2023. The time to himself - “I didn’t sing for nearly a year, and after surgery, I couldn’t talk for a month, and couldn’t sing for over three months,” he says, left him contemplating how to trace his experiences in the silence.
The album’s title track is Abney’s take on the inaccessible past, witnessing loss and grief through the years, damning the “days we let go left unsaid”, and accepting the uncontrollable circumstances we are sometimes placed in. “The troubles and the joys exist vibrantly in your memory, but you’re wondering if you remember correctly,” Abney remarks. “I’ve sometimes had this sort of confusion between memory and dreams - you crafted this ideal in your head of how things were or might be, in order to soften the blow of a harsher reality.”
The places we inhabit dictate how our memories form, and for Abney, there is one place to which he is constantly drawn: Oklahoma. Although he was born in the biggest little city in America, Reno, Nevada, he grew up learning guitar and piano in Tulsa, playing bars and DIY spaces from Norman to Stillwater. His affinity for the land that raised him is evident in the production of Transparent Towns.
Abney self-produced the record, tracking most of it at Cardinal Song outside of Oklahoma City, with Michael Trepagnier handling mixing and engineering. The band was comprised mostly of Sooner State musicians too, along with Lydia Loveless and John Moreland contributing harmony vocals. His signature vulnerable voice and lyrical handiwork comes through in each of the songs, along with his penchant for alternative pop melodies set against colorful chords and subtle soundscapes.
Having toured for years backing up artists like Moreland, Wild Child, Ben Kweller, and S.G. Goodman, Abney embraces a lead role again, as he presses forward with the loving lament and defiant joy throughout Transparent Towns, calling us to leave behind the pressures we place on our ourselves and recognize that just because there is an ending, it doesn’t mean it’s the end.
The years were dominoes
But now we're older, rest upon my shoulder
Then I have to go
Call us secrets
Screamed in microphones
We keep secrets
For folks we used to know
Say don’t think twice
But that’s what my mind does
Could we have known then
Could we have known then
Could we have known then
When our last chance was"
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.youtube.com/@johncalvinabney
https://johncalvinabney.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/johncalvinabney/#
https://www.tiktok.com/@johncalvinabney
https://www.facebook.com/johncalvinabney
https://x.com/johncalvinabney
John Calvin Abney rises again from the Oklahoman prairies with his latest album Transparent Towns, available September 19 on his own Tin Canyon Records, via Well Kept Secret / Secretly Distribution. The songs focus on how we remember, and ultimately accept, though he is not always certain the memories we carry adequately mark the moments that make us.
“This record is wrapped around the passage of time, whether or not we can trust the memories that we swear on, how we forgive ourselves and others as seasons turn, and how we define what is important as we roll the boulder back up the hill,” Abney says of Transparent Towns. “We build these routines and live our stories, we rely on our histories and our memories - spoken and recorded. Now, we’re relying on copies of copies, memories of memories, all packed like sardines into our phones, and we’re losing the ability to tell our own stories. I have to constantly remind myself, as well as redefine what matters at the end of a day.”
Transparent Towns is the seventh studio album for Abney, and his first since 2022’s Tourist, which he crafted after spending the pandemic as an itinerant writer. In contrast Abney penned most of the album’s 10 tracks during a period of introspection and convalescence while recovering from vocal cord surgery in 2023. The time to himself - “I didn’t sing for nearly a year, and after surgery, I couldn’t talk for a month, and couldn’t sing for over three months,” he says, left him contemplating how to trace his experiences in the silence.
The album’s title track is Abney’s take on the inaccessible past, witnessing loss and grief through the years, damning the “days we let go left unsaid”, and accepting the uncontrollable circumstances we are sometimes placed in. “The troubles and the joys exist vibrantly in your memory, but you’re wondering if you remember correctly,” Abney remarks. “I’ve sometimes had this sort of confusion between memory and dreams - you crafted this ideal in your head of how things were or might be, in order to soften the blow of a harsher reality.”
The places we inhabit dictate how our memories form, and for Abney, there is one place to which he is constantly drawn: Oklahoma. Although he was born in the biggest little city in America, Reno, Nevada, he grew up learning guitar and piano in Tulsa, playing bars and DIY spaces from Norman to Stillwater. His affinity for the land that raised him is evident in the production of Transparent Towns.
Abney self-produced the record, tracking most of it at Cardinal Song outside of Oklahoma City, with Michael Trepagnier handling mixing and engineering. The band was comprised mostly of Sooner State musicians too, along with Lydia Loveless and John Moreland contributing harmony vocals. His signature vulnerable voice and lyrical handiwork comes through in each of the songs, along with his penchant for alternative pop melodies set against colorful chords and subtle soundscapes.
Having toured for years backing up artists like Moreland, Wild Child, Ben Kweller, and S.G. Goodman, Abney embraces a lead role again, as he presses forward with the loving lament and defiant joy throughout Transparent Towns, calling us to leave behind the pressures we place on our ourselves and recognize that just because there is an ending, it doesn’t mean it’s the end.
John Calvin Abney, folk indie, indie folk, acoustic, singer songwriter, 7th studio album Transparent Towns, Tulsa, Oklahoma, "Last Chance" (Official Video), Western noir, pedal steel, twangy guitar, slide guitar, porch country,
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